The genius app idea: the importance of flexibility and customer feedback

Extract

[...] The genius app idea: the importance of flexibility and customer feedback Coming up with good entrepreneurial ideas and knowing how to evaluate them is difficult. In this respect, the student made three main mistakes: having the wrong preconceived notions about entrepreneurship and start-up founders, failing to develop a prototype, and not adopting the lean startup methodology. The student had the wrong assumptions about entrepreneurship The student was convinced that their idea would allow them to "become very rich", and worked alone. [...]

[...] As they were in an uncertain environment they should have used more entrepreneurial methods and emphasized customer feedback over intuition and flexibility over planning. The student thought that because they had a brilliant idea the execution would follow naturally however, ideas in entrepreneurship are just one part of the journey, and smart actions are required to make them a reality. Bibliography Basics of Entrepreneurial SPOC 31405 Script Entrepreneurship Fundamentals, Jan Lepoutre The Lean Startup Methodology. (2023). Theleanstartup.com. [...]

[...] Today they already have a rigorous business plan and a precise roadmap of the ten future versions of their application. However, they did not dedicate enough time to the exploration phase. The student is in an «uncertain environment» as they have no prior knowledge of entrepreneurship, application development, or of the field they wish to develop an application in. In order to create value for their customer they should have set an iterative cycle of ideation, testing, and data interpretation. [...]

[...] In order to find out if their idea of an application is attractive to customers the student should use the lean startup methodology. This methodology starts with the customer and aims to co-create the solution from the understanding of customer problems. The first step is finding the central problem that needs to be solved and then developing a prototype to begin the process of learning as quickly as possible. This way the student could develop the application based on findings from tests and feedback. For the past five months, the student tried to apply managerial methods to entrepreneurship. [...]

[...] The student has not yet found their "recipe for success", therefore they should keep an open and flexible mindset and be ready to modify their idea during the process. The most successful entrepreneurs tend to be the ones that have adapted their ideas multiple times to customer feedback than the ones that stuck rigidly to their early idea. Because in most cases, entrepreneurs turn out to do something very different than what they had initially set out to do, as their initial ideas turned out not to lead to success. [...]