Idea Napkin No. 2

1) You. Who you are. What your talents are. What your skills and experiences are. Also: what are your aspirations? Specifically regarding your business concept, how do you see this business (if you were to start it) playing a role in your life?

This idea is one that rounds out and completes my life.  Is it wrong that it start as completely selfish "I wish I had a..." Which turned into iDrive.  I name the process iDrive for main concept that I think many people forget to grasp when they start a new project "YOU ARE IN THE DRIVER SEAT!"  Hence the title of the application should be a constant reminder of who is in charge of your goals.  However, it is also a pneumonic device to the steps in the process itself.  The six steps to completing any task or even larger goal and they all start with "i" the idea. My talent is essentially the ability to untangle a weave of strings and find the way to untie it both conceptually and in construct.  This is true with both people and process.  It is what drives me and what I love.  We bought our home and I could instantly see past the clutter and poor design to a beautiful and modern interior and a massive amount of potential. Then is when I start to fall apart though I found A and I can see "Z" and I know it can go to Z if I follow the steps in the middle... But then life gets in the way; or I don't know how to do step D or step J has to start and stop 100 times for whatever reason.  It's frustrating and there needs to be a way to balance it. 

2) What are you offering to customers? Describe the product or service (in other words, how you'll solve customers' unmet needs). 

What I'm offering is a planning tool; that has built in plans.  Want to remodel a bathroom, start school, lose weight?  All admirable goals to obtain and while every home, school and body is different there are fundamental similarities in the way you plan for these activities and some similar things that you have to measure towards success.  IDrive would start with a the layer of your day to day tasks or "reflex tasks" (dishes, dry cleaning, laundry, cleaning, work, school, etc.) and then allow for the addition of ad hoc "tactical tasks;" like replacing burnt out lightbulbs, calling the plumber, etc.  Now you get to goals.  Some overwhelming feedback received thus far was that the concept was too broad so I would look for the longer term goals to begin with general health improvement (such as weight loss, dietary transformations and muscle building).  Think of a couch to 5k type guide but for multiple types of activities that would lead to general health. 

3) Who are you offering it to? Describe, in as much detail as possible, the demographic and psychographic characteristics of your customers. Think especially of this question: what do your customers all have in common?

There are a certain groups of people that this just won't be for.  This may work for those folks who are good note takers and plan makers already; it may make their day just a little easier.  The reality is though that they won't be looking to spend $5.99 on an app to help them do what they already do.   The application is for people (most likely) between the ages of 20 and 55 that own a smart phone or tablet and have the pesky issue of not being able to put into tasks and measures what they want to accomplish.  Although I did also find some good appetite amongst the classmates and interviewees that I've approached so far.  My thought is people who are frustrated with progress or can't balance their current day's work and still wish they could add more. 

4) Why do they care? Your solution is only valuable insofar as customers believe its valuable to them. Here, explain why customers will actually pay you money to use your product or service. 

What a truly great question. Aside from the concept of helping them to achieve their goals and the factor of motivation for their continued completion of tasks onwards toward them; there is also the factor of "do you need help with that?"  Imagine if you're planning a bathroom remodel. You type it into your app and it pushes out here are the X number of things and Y number of hours it will take... Feeling suddenly overwhelmed?  Why not link it to Angie's list so you can hire a contractor instead for that goal and move onto a new one?  Partnering with like applications (Uber, Angie's List, Groupon, etc.) could be a valuable way to create good synergies.  There was a motivational speech that I once heard that said if you showed me your schedule (how you use the 24 hours in the day) that I could show you where you were wasting time that could be used to get to your dreams.  What this app would focus on doing is inching it's way towards making your 24 hours as efficient towards a healthy lifestyle as possible.  

5) What are your core competencies? What sets you apart from everyone else? Also: what do you have that nobody else has? 

My wife might say: strategic thinking, strategic planning, charisma and analytical thought.  I would say that there is a fine line between Customer Focus (giving your customers what they want) and Operational Excellence (being efficient and effective within your process).  If you lean too much in one way or the other you start to take from either your customers or your operation.  I am one who tries to ride that line as balanced as possible.  Ensuring that my customers get what they need but that their wants don't impede on the ability for the process to serve them. 

6) In addition to these five elements, please spend a paragraph evaluating whether you believe these elements fit together or whether there are aspects of your business concept that are weaker / out-of-joint with the others. 

I think that the whole concept here is trying to build my Jarvis (Echo, Cortana, Siri, etc.) to fill in the void of my skill set.  I'm not a project planner.  I'm the idea man and I know the people and technology extremely well.  This has made me acutely aware of my weakness in setting the plan in motion and as such am extremely certain of its value in the process of success.  The gap here is that I (personally) don't have the pure understanding of how to make this business successful.  Sadly I'd need to have the program with the long term goal of "starting a business" so that it could give me the steps I need to take to make the vision a reality.   This class has actually been a fantastic outlet into turning the idea into more and more of a reality.  I'm looking forward to coming back as an alumni and sharing the results with Dr. Pryor and what is hopefully the next generation of would be inventors.  

Feedback Memo (What are 5 elements you incorporated into your idea from feedback you've received.):

To be honest I received a lot of positive feedback (which is good) but only a very few elements of constructive criticism.  I incorporated the concept of narrowing the focus to one area of long term goals so as to not provide to generic and therefore not as appropriate levels of guidance for longer term solutions.  I also expanded my age grouping based on feedback I received from classmates and interviewees.  I didn't think that college and younger ages would be appropriate for this application but I got a responding yes from everyone I asked in that bracket.  I expanded on the "idea" name and why iDrive came to be and added a bit more to the "why should the customer care" section to drive the point home a bit better.