Derek Innovates

Why this Problem?

 

The advent of the internet has ushered us into an information era that has connected people and information throughout the world like never before imaginable. The internet, however, is still a recent technology and requires further refining of its implementation in order to reach a higher level of efficiency for societal advancement. The internet, therefore, has the ability and further potential to help us connect people and resources. Connecting different communities of people with diverse resources facilitates societal advancement.  I have been naturally drawn to this concept and I recently discovered it as a common theme behind my extracurricular projects. The driving force that draws me to this concept lies within my own desire to innovate and bring my alluring reveries to fruition while helping others to do so as well. My journey to realize my goals has taught me much of the conventional method of innovation and its limitations on the general populous.

My name is Derek Thornton and I am a chemistry major at the University of Utah. When I began my studies at the university I was working on an idea called KeepitsicK as a potential start-up business. I was disillusioned with the fact that I had many extremely talented friends in music and freestyle sports that were not able to connect with their audiences. This is due to the barriers they encountered in connecting with the right people and resources. My idea involved an online social platform that would overcome these barriers via monthly recurring localized competitions that integrated local resources to facilitate networking and the building of local fan bases. Consequently, I observed these two identical barriers of people and resources involved in the conventional method of innovation as I struggled to form a team and access required resources for prototyping and market engagement.

KeepitsicK was the business idea that I worked on while participating in the F4 cohort of the Foundry. During my time in the Foundry I observed the efforts of other entrepreneurs. Most of them struggled to overcome the same two aforementioned barriers. I observed the excitement and risk of dedicating so much personal time to an idea that might not even make it to market. Interestingly enough, utilizing market research to determine product fit was not a concept that was effectively introduced to me during my activity in the cohort. This idea became more evident as I proceeded in my efforts after having received an invitation to a business competition due to my involvement in the Foundry. I did a certain amount of market research and thought that I understood my market well enough. Upon entering into business competitions the importance of market research to identify product fit quickly became evident and afterwards I determined that I could not continue without a proper team and further education on my potential market. This yielded the same difficult process of accessing the right resources and people. Eventually I sought to create my own resource for marketing.

I designed a marketing solution in the form of a club as a means of connecting people and resources for the effective marketing of organizations including my own. Organizations would apply to the club for marketing solutions and the club would form interdisciplinary teams to propose creative and innovative marketing campaigns. While working on this development I came to theorize a manner of resolving the problem of identifying market fit during the innovation process. This would assist the entrepreneurs that are unaware of their ideated product’s market fit which often results in wasted time on ideas or concepts that have no place in the current market.

 

From one project to the next I found the same barriers kept finding me and those around me. I was confident in my designs but it seemed apparent that my entrepreneurial engagement was inefficient and ineffective. Acknowledging the shared difficulty of those around me I found it condign to investigate the process of innovation and see if I could fix it in some way.