Opportunity
My opportunity strikes children who have special needs and the parents/family members of those children with special needs. The nature of the need is to educate, entertain, and distract their special needs child.
The forces or changes in the environment creating this opportunity are the growth in special education students in classrooms, the coronavirus moving special education students to online schooling where they are distracted and not as involved. The market isn’t defined geographically because it would be all over the country, maybe more so in cities where the population is higher, and defined demographically to special needs children receiving schooling under the age of eighteen years old. Customers are currently satisfying this need by providing to their special needs child through toys and games, fun videos, and online schooling; they are very loyal to what they use now, going to school everyday for hours, before and after school playing with toys and games and watching fun videos. This opportunity is very big with the right timing currently, there have been opportunities like this in the past but nothing involving games, education, and videos all in one. This “window of opportunity” will be open as long as special education students are receiving schooling online, maybe even as long as the coronavirus lasts.
Innovation
What this is is an app for special education students to access so they can learn what they’re learning in school through fun games and interactive videos. What this app does is grow the special needs child’s knowledge and understanding of the lessons they are partaking in school at the moment, it also serves to distract and entertain the special needs child. It works by the parent downloading the app from the app store, letting their special needs child access the app from their device whenever is possible, the special needs child will be enrolled on the app with their current grade and will be linked to games and videos of they are currently trying to learn in school. I at first wasn’t planning to sell the app, but noting I need to make money and viewing profit margins to other educational apps similar to this one I will charge a monthly subscription fee of ten dollars. It is free to download, this seems not too expensive because I still want to keep my customers in mind and their needs over pricing.
Venture Concept
My innovation will solve or address the opportunity I defined by educating and entertaining special needs children through its games and videos on the app.
The reasons customers would switch to this new product is because it is the right time, their special needs children are distracted in their online video lessons and aren’t involved in as many activities as they would be in school, the customer will find their special needs child learning and entertained in a new way. It might be a little hard to get my customers to switch over to my app because there are other apps out there, but because a lot of special needs children do like to play games on their parents phones and watch videos they will eventually find my app. The competitors are the other similar apps out there that try to have the same goals I have through my app. Possible weaknesses or vulnerabilities my competitors would have is that they don’t have the opportunity I have right now with the coronavirus occurring and special needs students at home, my competitors might not have games and videos in their app where special needs students can grow their learning. The role packaging, price points, distribution, customer support, the customer experience or the business location plays in defining my business concept is very small because this is an app which can be used or distributed through anyone’s phone, I think the only thing that is very important is the customer experience because there are other apps similar to this one out there and the customer wants to see their special needs child enjoying and entertaining and growing their learning continuously. I would organize a “business” to support the ongoing production of my new product, service, or process by needing an app developer that I can trust and work with to help create this app and reach all my goals I want to achieve through this app. There would maybe be one employee and that would be the app developer, kind of unknown because I don’t know how many employees it takes to help develop an app. Roles in the venture would be me as the creator and the mind behind the app, the app developer as the employee that helped make this app real.
The three minor elements
My most important resource, my “secret sauce” or “unfair advantage,” is that I do have experience with parents and children who are customers and I know what they do and don’t like and I know how to treat them fairly and work hard. Besides my innovative product, service, or process what I have that will make it hard for competitors to copy my success is this experience because competitors might not have interacted with parents and children before, especially in an educational setting.
What’s next for my venture, the next new product, service, or process that may be aimed at my existing customers is an app for children with other disabilities, like mental disorders, or learning disabilities like dyslexia. The apps would be similar, there would be entertaining videos, quizzes, lessons, but of course the learning material would fit that child’s disability.
What’s next for me, where I want to be in five years with this venture, where I want to be as an entrepreneur in the next decade is having these two apps out there in the app store that have many customers children growing their education and actually enjoying it. At some point when I would leave this business behind, I want to leave on a good note with a strong business, and I don’t want any customers noticing any big differences in the app once I leave. This first venture helps achieve my vision because this is an app for special needs children that would help them greatly and make them very happy.
Overall the feedback was positive, with my peers excited in my venture from the very beginning. The big changes in my venture concept, following my peers, is the pricing of my app, looking at profit margins I am now instead doing a monthly subscription service of ten dollars. And how exactly would this new app, new venture in my business, be similar and different to my current app and venture. Now the second app would be very similar to the current one except it would be targeting that disability, and would match that child’s disability and level of education. So, for example, if it were to be a mental disability the child was using the app for there’d also be counseling sessions and skills provided.
