What I've learned

I have learned as an entrepreneur playing the simulation for this class that I am not good at being an entrepreneur. This aside, I see that I have the ability to become more talented at this. I have learned so much more about being an entrepreneur from this class than I ever knew before, especially about social entrepreneurship and the impact of social ventures in today’s economy. Now, more than ever our society needs the help of entrepreneurs to develop new methods of doing things and to create new markets which can propel our society in to a new tomorrow. I have also learned of the difficulties involved in starting and maintaining a social venture. I hope one day to be able to overcome these difficulties and help the world

Dreams

If I could dream, and have those dreams come true, then I would have more products like tom’s shoes in the marketplace. I envision a world in which there are products of all kinds that follow this same business plan. Shampoo and soap which is priced a little more so that we can donate to those who are less advantaged. Selling pre packaged meals that mean more food for starving children in Africa. This is a beneficial plan that can be used to help better the world, one product at a time. How much would that boost sales to be able to boast that on your packaging? It would be phenomenal.

Climbing Venture

After doing the screening process of our venture ideas. It turns out that fitness centers are a growing industry, says the IBISWorld. They were a booming industry in 2007 but profits have since slowed but any profit in the current climate of the economy is good. There wasn't a NAISC code specific to a climbing gym so we had to go with fitness center (713940). The IBISWorld also helped us to determine a location for our venture with it's segementation report. In the geographic spread there are the most fitness centers found in the South East and the least in the Rocky Mountains. So we would not put our venture either of those places because we do not want the region to be over saturated and it there could be outside factors to why there are hardly any fitness centers in a certain region. Somewhere in the middle would be a good region to locate in. Also we think our gym will be in demand because it is not a regular gym, there will be rock climbing, yoga, hot yoga, belly dance, and more ways to work out.

Creativity vs. Innovation

Is it better for an entrepreneur to have creativity or innovation? And what is the difference?
Well creativity is the ability to form something completely new and original whether it is a design or product. With innovation you are taking something that already existed and modifying it to fit your needs. It is making adaptations to existing products to function in a new or different way.
As an entrepreneur it is good to have either one of these qualities but even better to have both. You need creativity to offer something new to your market, something that no one has. This is so people will find value in it's exclusivity or design. Innovation is needed because if you do not have ideal resources to produce your product or design you need to modify your product to fit the resources you do have. Also if there is problems with the product you will need to use innovation to fix these problems or the product might be more useful with a different purpose.