Halfway Reflection

Something that I have never done before because I just never had the drive to keep up with is make a schedule and sticking to it. Every Sunday I make a weekly schedule outlining everything I need to get done for that week. This has been the key to me keeping up with the assignments in this class.

There has been many times that I wanted to give up on an assignment due to how much time it would take and I simply just did not want to do it. Even though I felt like this I finished my work. I finished because I knew my grade depended on it and if I started slacking my grade would suffer.

My there tips would be to start the assignment at least a week before the due date. This will give you ample amount of time to get all the components of the assignment done. Second tip is to make a schedule and stick to it. This will organize your week and allow you to complete all of these assignment as well as any other commitments you might have. The third is to have fun with the class. It is an interesting course and you should try to make the most of it.

Reading Reflection No. 1

The autobiography that I read was of Ray Kroc the person that turned McDonalds into the fast food giant that it is today. Kroc was an amazing business man who drive for success turned him into a legend but destroyed his personal life as well. The part that surprised me the most about his story is that it was not until he was 50 that he met the McDonald brothers and he began working with them. The part that I most admired is that he never gave up. He constantly looked for opportunities to do business and succeed in his career. To go from selling milkshake machines and plastic cups to owning the biggest fast food industry in the world is simply amazing. What I least admired is that this ruthless mentality led him to back stab his partners and ruin his marriage. He encountered multiple failures such as working for a bar that sold liquor illegally and selling bad real-estate but after that he went to sell milkshake makers and that led him to McDonalds.

Ray Kroc had a great mind for business. He saw opportunities where others did not. He noticed that drive throughs where becoming spots for young people to hang out in and this created and unfriendly environment for families. He also notices that the fast pace of the McDonald restaurants eliminated this problem and took the opportunity. He then turned the McDonald franchise into a real-estate business which created the foundation for this industry.

I did not find any part of the reading that was confusing. I did not understand how someone can care more about his business than his family but everyone has different priorities and one cannot judge from the outside.

If I could ask any two questions they would be as follows. The first would be how he lived with himself after he betrayed his partner. The people that gave him an opportunity to create what he did and then to just cut them out completely. The second thing would be after everything he accomplished and everything he lost. Was it worth it?

I think his opinion on hard work must be that it is for fools. To work smart not hard. Some people go their whole life’s working hard and never amount to anything. It is about working hard on the right opportunities and never for someone else’s benefit only your own. I guess I agree with this mentality it is a bit blunt but it is completely true.

Figuring Out Buyer Behavior

It was not hard to find three people to interview that had the unmet need. Everyone uses alarm clocks and a lot of those who use it do not like to wake up to them. Although they all have the unmet need two out of the three never thought about looking into a substitution. It is cray how comfortable people get with something just because everyone uses them even if it is a mediocre product. From my interviews I learned that they come in contact with their need in the morning as they wake up for class or for work. Only one of them had looked on the internet in hopes of finding a better method of waking up and they decided that there was no clear solution. They had tried the smart watch silent alarms but found them uncomfortable as well so they just stuck with the old fashion alarm clock

Idea Napkin 1

My name is Gonzalo Borquez. I was born in Argentina and moved to Miami at the age of seven. I have a strong mathematical background combined with great organizational skills. My aspiration like most is to run my own successful business. Except unlike most I have the determination to sacrifice everything to achieve my goal.

My product is a revolutionary alarm clock. It is one that does not startle you awake and is reliable enough for you to not have to worry about over sleeping. I have come up with a new method of waking up. It is a simple device that slides under your mattress and vibrates when indicated to wake you up. The equivalent to another person tapping you awake.

This product is for every working human being or any person that has the need to wake up at a specific time. This is a huge range of customers as the majority of civilians need to be waken up in order to get to school, work, or any sort of commitment they might have.

I believe this is needed for every person that cannot stand being waken up by a loud and obnoxious alarm clock. People do not like it, I know I don not. This way if you have roommates they will not be woken up by your alarm and vice versa. If you are a heavy sleeper there are setting you can adjust to change the strength of the vibration.

Everyone has settle for the mediocre alarm clock but I have not. This is what sets me apart. I am the first to come up with this solution and therefore have an advantage on the market. An alarm is so widely used that no one thought of it broken or needed fixing since everyone else used it. I am braking those boundaries and changing the way we wake up.

I think these questions do fit together. The part that sets me apart I believe to be my strongest quality since no one else is thinking of this. My weakest I would have to say is the specifics of my product. I do not know how exactly it would work since I am not an engineer but the idea is a simple one. This does not worry me so much though.

Elevator Pitch 1

Testing the Hypothesis Part 2

This assignment was harder than I thought it would be. Finding several people that were outside the boundaries of my opportunity was very difficult. As you know almost everyone at this school uses alarm clocks. Most of the people I interviewed were adults that had either retired or just did not work.

The who. Like I said before these people that fall outside the boundaries are not your average civilian. They are those that have finished contributing to society and those who lack the ability to. I am talking about people without jobs and some without any responsibility. I am not saying that only those who use alarm clocks have a responsibility just that they have at least the responsibility of having to be somewhere at a certain time. I mostly interviewed elderly people those who have retired. In my conversations with them, every single one of them had used an alarm clock before. Now they say they do not use them simply because they do not have too. Also, most of them go to bed early and therefore wake up early. One said that he takes his hearing aid off to go to sleep so he wouldn't even hear an alarm if it went off (I found this man very amusing).

The what. It took me some time to get good feedback from this one but after a lot of brainstorming, I found an answer. I realized that my need was not to wake up in the morning it was more of the way someone wakes up. Alarms can be harmful to the heart and create stress for our bodies and minds. That is the true what. It isn't the alarms, it is the noise they produce and how they startle you awake.

The why. The why for the outsider is simply that they do not have the need to wake up at a certain time. The need is simply not there like it is for your average working individual. 

Inside the Boundary	Outside the Boundary
Those with the need to wake up at certain times	Those who have no commitment to time
A better way to wake up	Needing to wake up early
Because alarm clocks are not good	Because it works for some people

Solving the Problem

My problem is a tough one since it is alarm clocks. There are too many variables and I have not come up with a full prove solution. If I had I would be rich. One thing I was thinking is a device that goes underneath your mattress and it sends a vibration at a specific time to wake you up. It would be the equivalent to someone lightly touching you to wake you. For people that are heavy sleepers, the vibrations would be stronger. It can be used with Bluetooth and you can set multiple alarms and control the strength of the vibration.