Entrepreneur's Handbook
ENTREPRENEURSHIP THINKING METHODS
Schematic thinking method is based on listening to people, understanding their stories and problems, and understanding their unmet or not fully met needs. First, you try to understand customers and their stories by empathizing, then you focus on the problems, then you develop ideas for the problems you find, then you make prototypes from the ideas and see if these people meet their needs.
3.2. Method of Jobs to be Done
We talked about the concept of need, we asked "Is it a need to play MP3 or listen to music?" And we said that the main thing is to listen to music. This method, which is called "Jobs to be done" in English, actually states that we should focus on what is wanted to be done, not the tools.
For example, if you want to hang a photo on your wall, you should focus on drilling holes in your wall, not buying a hammer. Considering the same logic, while the whole automotive industry focused on selling more vehicles to more people, with trends such as the sharing economy, it focused on people's needs only to "go from one place to another" and companies like Uber and Lyft emerged. When focusing on customer motivations and what they want to do, you can equip all sectors with innovation from top to bottom.
While everyone thinks that women should have a good hairdressing salon close to their needs, if you realize that the motivation of women is to have their hair cut beautifully, you can forget about the hairdressing salon and its many costs and you can make an application that offers hairdressing services to the home.
In fact, if you realize that there is a need to prevent the outside from seeing us or too much sun through our windows, you can not only invent a new curtain, but also invent a nanotechnological glass that interrupts the visual connection between the inside and the outside.
Although it seems like a need for wallets carried on the pocket to carry more credit cards and more money, phones have become a means of payment and these needs have turned into digital needs, and wallets have become only ID cards.
The television remote control in the home is not actually a need, although currently it functions to change channels, increase and decrease the volume, they are actually the last ones needed. In other words, a television without a remote that performs these functions with sound can also enter our lives.
As can be seen from the examples, people have motivation and tools to do a job, tools can always change. By looking at the environment from this perspective, you can actually examine which jobs people do with which motivation and try to change the tools they use. It is not necessary to be a technology savvy inventor to do this. For example, although it may seem like a nice feature to have a super market in a neighborhood, what people actually need is not being a super market where they can find everything, but to find everything and bring them to their homes and kitchens. For this reason, there have been initiatives that provide home market service. In this way, you will have the chance to bring many products that are not available in your neighborhood to your door.
3.3. Types of Innovation and Creating Ideas
Innovation means useful novelty. The fact that it works is the most important factor that separates innovation from every new thing created. So not every novelty is innovation. Speaking in the context of entrepreneurship, it can be defined as innovations that will make a difference in the market and provide an advantage in competition. Although innovation is identified with the work itself and the idea, innovation can be made at every point of the elements that make up the work. In other words, innovation can be made in areas such as business model, organizational, business network, product performance, sales channel, customer experience, product presentation.
- As an example of innovation in terms of business model, offering basic features called "semi-paid" free of charge and charging extra features can be shown. Open source can be shown as an example of innovation in terms of business model. Developing products as open source, including the customer and business network in the business model, charging for consultancy and special solutions is innovation in terms of business model.
- The customer experience offered by Starbucks in the coffee market and the fact that it offers a different service to its customers by likening its branches to the home environment is an innovation in terms of customer experience.
- With the rapid growth of the Internet, we come across innovation in terms of sales channels every day. It may be an example to buy products we bought from grocery stores, markets and stores online.
- Organizational innovation, on the other hand, is an example of outsourcing, using more digital tools and providing advantages that will stand out in the market with organizational changes.
3.3.1. Innovation Resources
The source of innovation can be gathered in three main sources as customer, technology or market trends.
- Listening to the customer and focusing on the customer's needs and problems, not on the customer's solutions, is important for innovation. Henry Ford's famous quote actually explains this clearly. “If I had asked customers what they wanted, they would have said they wanted a faster horse.” Another point to be considered here is the market size of customers with common needs and problems and what you can do. In other words, although long journeys are a problem for everyone, you should consider whether you can make a teleport device or if you can, the number of customers who can afford it. If you are teleporting a customer to another location for $ 1 million, your market will be as many as the number of people who can spend $ 1 million on a trip.
- An example of technology-driven innovation can be explained with iPhone or Nanotechnology. Technological developments in nano-technology enable products and innovations using nanotechnology to be produced every day.
- Innovation based on market trends, is the innovation created in the light of market developments. Making local versions of global projects (not exact copies) can be cited as a prime example of this type of innovation.
If you say innovation from which source is more valid, although customer-focused innovation always seems to be ahead, hybrid-sourced innovations that are difficult to copy are the most useful innovation sources in the long run. The biggest example of this is the iPhone. Innovation made in terms of technology cannot be imitated yet, and it also includes an innovation understanding that produces solutions to customer problems. Its continuous renewal according to market trends and feedback increases its advantages in competition day by day.