This session explores how to generate ideas, how to assess whether an idea has potential, the skills required for entrepreneurial success, and how to handle initial failures. Delivered at Bath Spa University on 7/1015

1. Starting Your Venture
Dave Jarman. Head of Enterprise &
Employability

2. In this session
• Why start something?
• Entrepreneurial success
• What should you start?
• Brainstorming for ideas
• Evaluating Ideas
• Facing Failure

3. Why start something?
• Why people start
businesses:
– Because they need to:
• Nature of their industry
• Personal circumstances
– Because they want to:
• To act on an idea
• To be their own boss –
autonomy
• To change the world
• To do something better
• Lifestyle choice
• What would motivate
YOU to start something?

4. “The best plan (for would-be entrepreneurs) is
always to choose a business idea in an area where
they have a genuine passion, rather than
something they suspect could make money, but
where they have no personal expertise or track
record.”
Mike Southon – The Beermat Entrepreneur

5. “Entrepreneur n. a person who undertakes a
commercial venture.”
Oxford English Dictionary

6. Entrepreneurial Success
• What are the characteristics and abilities of a
successful entrepreneur?
• ‘Knowledge’, ‘skills’, or ‘attitudes’?
– Things we know
– Things we can do
– Ways we approach things
• What does this tell us about being an
entrepreneur?

7. Entrepreneurial Success
• No single model
• No cast-iron factors in determining intra- or
entrepreneurialism
• Happens at different points to different
people in different ways
• Bottom line: Good at spotting opportunities
and taking them (networking, self-awareness,
self-efficacy)

8. Innovation & Enterprise Skills
• Associated
skills/aptitudes
– Opportunity recognition
(Commercial Awareness)
– Autonomy & Initiative
(Self-Awareness & Self-
Efficacy)
– Decision-making capability
(with limited information)
– Creative problem-solving
– Networking capacity
– Strategic thinking
– Persuasive capacity

9. The Entrepreneurial Team
• Not everyone is ‘the’ entrepreneur
• Quite frankly entrepreneurs by themselves would fail
• An entrepreneurial start-up needs a TEAM:
– The Entrepreneur – ideas, confidence, ambition, energy
– The Cornerstones – professional skills, passion, courage,
action
• (Technical) Innovator
• Delivery Specialist
• Sales Specialist
• Finance Specialist
– The ‘Dream Team’ – specialist knowledge/ability

10. What should you start up?
• Solve a problem
• Fill a gap in the market
• 2 principles:
– The Customer is always right
– “If I’d asked my customers what they wanted,
they’d have asked for a faster horse.” (Henry Ford)

12. Brainstorming for ideas

13. Creativity exercises #1 & #2
• Individual exercise
– 1 minute to identify as
many different ways of
using the object as you
can
• Group exercise
– 2 minutes to identify as
many different ways of
using the object as you
can

14. “It is better to have enough ideas for
some of them to be wrong, than to
always be right by having no ideas at
all.”
Edward De Bono

15. The PMI (+C)
• P is for Plus
• M is for Minus
• I is for Interesting!
• (C is for Commercial Opportunities)
PMI (C) these:
– Marriage as a 5-year renewable contract
– Paint all cars yellow

16. Ask the right question
• “How do I build a better mousetrap?”
• Or.. “How do I get rid of the mice?”

18. Evaluating Ideas
For an idea to be valuable
it has to:
• Have impact
– Right customer
– Creates value
• Be feasible
– Good product/service
– Good team
• Knowing you have a
good idea

19. Your challenge…
Near-field communications:
• Chips in smartphones
that react when close to
emitters
• Enables messages and
content to be distributed
by geography and
proximity
• What could you do with
this technology?
• Map your post it notes
onto the map

21. Expect to Fail

22. Facing Failure
• 90% of start-ups fail: Top 4 reasons
– Made something that no-one wants
– Ran out of cash
– Didn’t have the right team
– Couldn’t compete
• The trick is persistence; most successful
entrepreneurs have failed multiple times

23. Facing Failure
• The more ideas you have the more likely you
are to find one that works
• Test it early and test it often (with customers)
• Involve others in the design and development
• Get ready to pivot
• Think big, act small, fail fast.

24. Create it Challenge
• 60 second video + 600
characters
• Test your idea, get
feedback!
• £100 to be won by the
most popular and
creative ideas
• Deadline 16th
November
https://bathsparks.wazoku.com

25. In this session
• Why start something?
• Entrepreneurial success
• What should you start?
• Brainstorming for ideas
• Evaluating Ideas
• Facing Failure

26. Thank you!
• bathsparks@bathspa.ac.uk
• @bathsparks
• FB.com/bathsparks