Hello all,
Just going to be covering another update of what our team accomplished last week! I think we are very solidly caught up, given that we decided to shift away from our first chosen patent, CRISPR, at a pretty late stage. We are combining two patents in order to make our product now - one that reads sweat levels and another that monitors physiological changes. Our goal is to create a device that can be used for people with mental health issues or problems like autism, in order to better track how they respond to stimuli and provide recommendations for how they can lead a more stress-free, healthy life. However, we'll talk more about that in our team blog - right now, I'm going to focus more on an update of how our team is doing and what steps we are taking.
In this week, we had a lot of discussions about what kind of product we want to make. We had a team-wide video call in which we discussed different product ideas, and we mulled over the decision of how we want to introduce this product to consumers - we're leaning towards starting with people with health issues and then expanding it to the whole population once the product has gained consumer trust. We also briefly pondered the idea of b2b vs b2c, but more on that later. Currently, we are finalizing our value proposition canvas and also hashing out our customer survey/interview questions. Next on the agenda is carrying out those interviews to get a better idea of how to shape/design the product and how to market it. We haven't addressed it as a team yet, but I personally have done a bit of digging and had some trouble trying to find out our preliminary SAM/SOM for this idea, so that's something I'm planning on discussing with the group in this week's meeting.
In terms of team cohesion, I think it's going really well - we are having good and productive meetings, and, for the most part, everything is going according to schedule.
Thursday, March 16, 2017
Thursday, March 9, 2017
Private Blog Post 2 - Update
Hello,
In this week's private blog post, I will just be talking a little more about where our team is, what we hope to accomplish in the coming week, and some personal updates.
As I mentioned in my public blog, our team is making some major changes to our project idea - mainly that we're switching away from the patent idea we were set on doing before. For a number of reasons, as I have mentioned in my other post, we will not be working on CRISPR. In terms of our schedule, this puts us in a bit of a time crunch moving forward, but we have a solid plan to make sure we hit the ground running. Right now we are still in the stage of selecting a new patent - Early Warning Systems seems like a very popular idea, but we are still looking - and this weekend we plan to have a workday to get ourselves up to speed. The plan is to spend a full day just doing a lot of background research and creating our Value Proposition and MVP - we will also be collecting and parsing through customer surveys to design the product more efficiently. I think our goal is to get to the stage that every other group, having selected a project a week ago, is at right now, so that we are on track with the pace of the class.
I think one quality of our group is that we are all perfectionists, and while that is very positive in terms of quality of work, sometimes I believe it slows us down on deadlines. I personally suffer from this as well - I spend too much time deciding and laying out my ideas before I get to work, as I want the work to be something perfect. I think one skill that we will learn over time is being more receptive to factors like time as opposed to the final product - you can't always churn out a perfect result, but rather the best result that you have the resources to produce (helicopter/car Lego project!). For example, I would say we are definitely spending more time than the average team picking a patent idea - while that is good, we also need to make sure we have that idea nailed down by this week, instead of indefinitely researching for the best project.
Personally, I think I am definitely getting more involved in this project as the weeks progress. At the beginning it was a lot of just digesting information - now we are actually taking what we learned and putting it to use in a very practical way, which is exactly what I was looking forward to when I signed up for this class. I also think I have a much better understanding of patent law now than I did earlier - I re-read the notes to prep for the quiz and picked up a lot of stuff that I missed in lecture. Overall, I'd say things are looking up. We have a bit of catching-up to do, but I'm confident we can make it.
In this week's private blog post, I will just be talking a little more about where our team is, what we hope to accomplish in the coming week, and some personal updates.
As I mentioned in my public blog, our team is making some major changes to our project idea - mainly that we're switching away from the patent idea we were set on doing before. For a number of reasons, as I have mentioned in my other post, we will not be working on CRISPR. In terms of our schedule, this puts us in a bit of a time crunch moving forward, but we have a solid plan to make sure we hit the ground running. Right now we are still in the stage of selecting a new patent - Early Warning Systems seems like a very popular idea, but we are still looking - and this weekend we plan to have a workday to get ourselves up to speed. The plan is to spend a full day just doing a lot of background research and creating our Value Proposition and MVP - we will also be collecting and parsing through customer surveys to design the product more efficiently. I think our goal is to get to the stage that every other group, having selected a project a week ago, is at right now, so that we are on track with the pace of the class.
I think one quality of our group is that we are all perfectionists, and while that is very positive in terms of quality of work, sometimes I believe it slows us down on deadlines. I personally suffer from this as well - I spend too much time deciding and laying out my ideas before I get to work, as I want the work to be something perfect. I think one skill that we will learn over time is being more receptive to factors like time as opposed to the final product - you can't always churn out a perfect result, but rather the best result that you have the resources to produce (helicopter/car Lego project!). For example, I would say we are definitely spending more time than the average team picking a patent idea - while that is good, we also need to make sure we have that idea nailed down by this week, instead of indefinitely researching for the best project.
Personally, I think I am definitely getting more involved in this project as the weeks progress. At the beginning it was a lot of just digesting information - now we are actually taking what we learned and putting it to use in a very practical way, which is exactly what I was looking forward to when I signed up for this class. I also think I have a much better understanding of patent law now than I did earlier - I re-read the notes to prep for the quiz and picked up a lot of stuff that I missed in lecture. Overall, I'd say things are looking up. We have a bit of catching-up to do, but I'm confident we can make it.
Thursday, March 2, 2017
Private Blog Post 1 - Overview of Team Cohesion/Dynamic
Hello,
This will be my first private blog post, and I will be talking briefly about our team and how it is coming together.
Overall, I'd say our team is off to a strong start in terms of cohesion. We all get along quite well, and we have enjoyed the time that we have spent together so far. During the 1.5 hour rejection activity, we had a lot of down time in periods when we were walking from one end of campus to the other, looking for trades or coming up with ideas. During this time, we got to know each other a little better, and we had a lot of fun talking, not only about the box trades or the project, but just on the level of a friendly conversation. I think my team members are smart and committed, and I look forward to continuing to work with them. Everyone also seems to be pretty open-minded - I mentioned in one of my earlier blog posts that this is one of the things I really value in people I work with. That's definitely something I've been happy with, as I'm sure it will allow us to have many more good, open discussions in the coming weeks.
The main area of improvement that I can see going forward is in the frequency of our meeting/communication. In the last few weeks - I, myself, am also responsible for this - many of us have been bogged down with midterms, illness, work, etc., and we haven't been able to meet outside of class very often in order to discuss our project. However, we maintain decent communication through our group text, in terms of reminding one another of deadlines and any information we need going forward. We were able to successfully organize and carry out our faculty meeting in this manner. However, I do think we need to spend more time meeting face-to-face, as I believe it allows us to work more efficiently as a team. I think it would be valuable, moving forward, to split the work based on our roles in the company, dole out individual assignments, and then come together in team meetings to discuss/present our findings and then work as a group for the parts of the project that require collaboration. In this fashion, I think we can work more efficiently moving forward.
Overall, I am very happy with the way my team is coming together, and I'm looking forward to working with them!
This will be my first private blog post, and I will be talking briefly about our team and how it is coming together.
Overall, I'd say our team is off to a strong start in terms of cohesion. We all get along quite well, and we have enjoyed the time that we have spent together so far. During the 1.5 hour rejection activity, we had a lot of down time in periods when we were walking from one end of campus to the other, looking for trades or coming up with ideas. During this time, we got to know each other a little better, and we had a lot of fun talking, not only about the box trades or the project, but just on the level of a friendly conversation. I think my team members are smart and committed, and I look forward to continuing to work with them. Everyone also seems to be pretty open-minded - I mentioned in one of my earlier blog posts that this is one of the things I really value in people I work with. That's definitely something I've been happy with, as I'm sure it will allow us to have many more good, open discussions in the coming weeks.
The main area of improvement that I can see going forward is in the frequency of our meeting/communication. In the last few weeks - I, myself, am also responsible for this - many of us have been bogged down with midterms, illness, work, etc., and we haven't been able to meet outside of class very often in order to discuss our project. However, we maintain decent communication through our group text, in terms of reminding one another of deadlines and any information we need going forward. We were able to successfully organize and carry out our faculty meeting in this manner. However, I do think we need to spend more time meeting face-to-face, as I believe it allows us to work more efficiently as a team. I think it would be valuable, moving forward, to split the work based on our roles in the company, dole out individual assignments, and then come together in team meetings to discuss/present our findings and then work as a group for the parts of the project that require collaboration. In this fashion, I think we can work more efficiently moving forward.
Overall, I am very happy with the way my team is coming together, and I'm looking forward to working with them!
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