It’s business week here at Enterprise by Design, and like an episode straight out of Dragon’s Den, our teams are being put to the test by having to do elevator pitches to our experts. Dr. Siwan Mitchelmore, from the Bangor Business School gave our teams a talk about how to take their initial ideas and turn them into tangible business ventures!
Some of her key questions for the groups were:
- How do you know if your idea is viable?
- How does your idea create value to the end user?
- How can we convert ideas into opportunities?
Dr. Mitchelmore reminded the students that not all of their ideas will be developed into opportunities. Our teams have to consider a number of issues when considering whether a basic idea can be turned into a worthwhile opportunity.
What teams should be considering…
- Uniqueness
- Sales Growth
- Product Availability
- Customer Availability
- Investment
Our teams are now at the stage that their ideas need to have background research and proof that their product is a viable winner for the judges! To do this, students will hopefully be putting together competitor analysis, industry analysis, market analysis, business concept statements and the financial situation of their proposed ideas. The teams have to consider what other businesses are doing in the industry, and how their idea would add more value to the market and target the right audience for the product.
Presenting our Elevator Pitches…
Our experts encouraged the teams to do research into their potential customer market and what the buyer behaviour might be in order to present a strong case for why their idea is worth investing into! At the end of the night, the groups had to do quick elevator pitches to the experts with just a few sentences to get their idea across in a clear, concise manner that would make the judges want to know more.
The teams only had a few minutes to sell their idea in a convincing way, describing what separates their business idea from the competition, explaining how their product could solve customers’ problems and laying out the ways that their target customers should choose them over the competition. A successful Elevator pitch would identify all the benefits that the team’s product had to offer, describe what makes the benefits valuable, identity the customer’s main problem, connect this problem to the buyer’s problem and differentiate and justify themselves as the preferred provider of this value.
For some teams, their ideas are far enough along that they would survive a judges’ panel. For others, they’re gonna need a few more weeks to develop their products. Either way, we’ve only got four weeks left, so hopefully our students will be ready to step into their own “Dragon’s Den” at the Enterprise by Design finale!