INSPIRED BY MARKET TRENDS: PITCH A BUSINESS IN 90 MINUTES

ABSTRACT
This exercise is designed to help students understand how businesses emerge based on current
trends. While innovators may influence the market demand, followers ride the trend wave,
frequently becoming the market leader. The process illustrates how an innovator may apply a
market trend to a new industry, therefore maximizing the ability to enter the market place
successfully with a viable product that is enticing to the customer. Students will combine a trend
with a new industry and demonstrate the viability of their chosen business in one class period.

Keywords:

Market trends, business plan, innovation

(Submitted for consideration for presentation at

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 INTRODUCTION

This exercise is designed to help undergraduate business students taking a course in

entrepreneurship to understand how businesses emerge based on current trends. While innovators

may influence the market demand, followers ride the trend wave, frequently becoming the

market leader. The process illustrates how an innovator may apply a market trend to a new

industry, therefore maximizing the ability to enter the market place successfully with a viable

product that that is enticing to the customer. Students will combine a trend with a new industry

and demonstrate the viability of their chosen business in one class period.

The intension of this exercise is to awaken a spirit of creativity, curiosity, and trend

analysis that will serve the students well in their careers. Chen et al. (2015) describe innovative

company as one that keeps an innovative spirit alive; studies trends, technology, and customer

needs; cultivates a constant inflow of innovative ideas; is able to introduce innovations with

speed and efficiency; and seeks to maximize profits in each innovation. Students who embrace

these principles early on will demonstrate great potential to their employers (Birdthistle, Costin,

& Hynes, 2016).

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF WORKSHOP

The instructor used the subscription box industry as the current trend in one classroom,

and discovered a great deal of excitement and brainstorming as students combined the

subscription box concept to their hobbies, activities, and experiences (Warrillow, 2015). They

discovered the intensity of vastness of the market trend, and looked for other growth industries to

determine the products they would sell. Students introduced a variety of boxes, ranging from

clothing to sports equipment, and most groups chose to target their own market: The college-age

student.

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Workshop Format (90 minutes):

o The moderator will discuss current consumer trends in an industry, and show key

statistics in that industry. (10 minutes)

o Moderator and attendees will discuss knowledge of trend and share examples. (10

minutes)

o The attendees will be divided into teams with 4 or 5 members. (5 minutes)

o The mini-business plan will be introduced with instructions on how to start a new

business within that trend, and project the potential for growth of new business. Students

must manage the task, taking into account the expertise of each team, and possibly

dividing the work load for better efficiency of time. See Figure 1 for the directions for

students as listed below (45 minutes)

o Create a mini business plan (PowerPoint) for a business, and include:

▪ What will you sell within the trend?

▪ Business name

▪ Target market description and projected size of market

▪ Justify demand/growth potential

▪ What other industry is your business in? Can you merge two growth areas

to build a competitive advantage?

▪ What is the industry outlook for that secondary industry (growth, decline)?

▪ Best strategies for success in that industry? Which strategies will your

company use to reach them?

▪ Projected sales volume?

▪ Price of product? Profit margin?

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 ▪ Who would you need on your startup team (expertise)?

o Teams will pitch their idea to all class attendees and get feedback (15 minutes)

o Debrief students on the process they experienced and discuss implications for their course

project, along with implications in their career (5 minutes)

So What?

Students who experience the discovery of how market trends influence business startups

and new product development, may be inspired to become an entrepreneur or an intrapreneur.

Intended Audience:

This exercise is intended for undergraduate business majors taking entrepreneurship as an

elective, and can be used with any entrepreneurship and/or innovation group, whether in a

classroom setting or workshop.

Learning Outcomes:

o Students will understand the role of trends and innovation in new product development.

o Students will identify potential disruptive innovation and take advantage of trends to

introduce a high-demand and high-success rate product or service.

o Students learn through practice to solve a market need through specific innovation

strategy, and reflect on the exercise to bring deeper learning and career applications.

Key Takeaways:

This interactive exercise provides an opportunity for students to use analytical skills in

studying trends, problem solving skills to discover gaps in the marketplace, organize a team to

maximize productivity within the time allotted, use presentation and persuasion skills to share

the results of their research.

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 Educators may keep the exercise fresh by introducing different market trends and

challenging students to combine trends into new market applications, or may choose to conduct

this exercise several times in a semester, exposing students to a variety of trends, and therefore

helping students develop a keen eye for innovations.

Conclusion:

This practical exercise is designed to be of immediate value to entrepreneurship educators

(and thus to their students), who want to emphasize opportunity recognition or other idea

generation topics. This exercise can be adapted to workshops or entrepreneurial events outside

the classroom, where the group desires to brainstorm new product introductions in a fast

creativity and analysis.

The feedback from students in the initial trial for this exercise was one of enthusiasm and

yet a bit of regret that they had already chosen their projects for the semester and would have

liked this exercise to be introduced earlier in the course. The instructor plans to use this exercise

during the third or fourth week of the course, where students have already selected a business to

start, yet haven’t invested much time into it yet. If this exercise proves to have more potential

than their initial projects, there would still be time to change projects.

TEXTS RECOMMENDED / BIBLIOGRAPHY

youth of today: A teacher's perspective. Education & Training, 58(7/8), 766-782.

Chen, S.-c., Hsiao, H.-c., Chang, J.-c., Chou, C.-m., Chen, C.-p., & Shen, C.-h. (2015). Can the

entrepreneurship course improve the entrepreneurial intentions of students? International

Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, 11(3), 557-569.

doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11365-013-0293-0

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Warrillow, J. (2015). The automatic customer creating a subscription business in any industry.

London: Portfolio Penguin.

APPENDIX

Figure 1. Project directions for students