0:05
I want you to think about some personal points of
pain, some bumps in the road for your daily lives.
I'll give you some examples.
Some of the ones, some of my students here at the University of Virginia have
suggested our you know, where can I get cheap, fast but healthy food.
How can I resell my furniture when I'm leaving school?
0:37
And someone even said, well, gee, how can I end relationships
in a way that's not so painful as breakups often are?
Each of these personal pain points contain the seeds of business ideas.
When we take an approach to business like
the one we've discussed for the past several weeks.
Yes, you have to make money and you have to create value for someone.
I'm going to take a personal example of a pain
point for me and that's getting my car repaired.
I don't know about you.
Have you ever felt that you were ripped off
when you got your car or your motor bike repaired?
I don't know about where you live in the US.
Sometimes car repair business has a reputation for not
very ethical behavior. And I'm not very good at it.
I was the guy in school who couldn't take an engine apart and put it back together.
I think most guys are supposed to be able to do that but I couldn't.
And so, getting my car repaired has always
been one of those things where I was afraid
I was going to get ripped off and not, not know what I was doing.
So let's suppose you wanted to take
advantage of that reputation of unethical behavior.
And suppose you wanted to start a business that clean that up.
You want to make the world a better place and,
of course, you gotta make, make some money as well.
So let's start a business, let's call it Maggie's Auto Repair.
2:07
How would you think about that, where Maggie's Auto
Repair is going to be an ethical, responsible car repair business?
So let's go back to what we've talked about.
Let's start with purpose.
2:21
Well, what about something like what we're trying to do with Maggie's Auto
Repair, is take the fear and unethical behavior out of the car repair business.
I'm afraid to get it repaired.
I'm afraid
I"m going to get ripped off. Let's take that out.
Or maybe our purpose is provide trustworthy car repair for our town.
2:43
The scope is different in both of these businesses.
but both turn out to be viable.
So, let's think about stakeholders, our purpose, let's think about stakeholders.
In the first model, you might want to find a way to provide a service to
existing car repair businesses, who want some kind of stamp of
assurance, the Maggie stamp of assurance, that they meet ethical guidelines.
That leads you down a path of figuring out what would be important?
3:14
How
[INAUDIBLE]
important are issues like, a return service, no questions asked?
Or, transparency about where parts might come from.
Or pricing transparency. Why does labor cost really this much?
Or maybe it's about recycling of materials.
What happens to the old parts?
Maybe it's about environmental cleanup. What happens when you get the oil changed?
How does that process work? You can imagine coming up with something
like a score card that would rate car repair services on these
criteria. And that would be one way to take this
idea of taking the fear and the unethical behavior out of car repair
[INAUDIBLE]
services.
A second model might focus more on the geography of where you live, of building
a brand of car repair that becomes known for its good business practices.
You would have to treat customers transparently
and fairly, be good citizens in the community,
and do all of the kinds of things we've talked about in this course, so far,
to create value for stakeholders. This is really a simple idea.
But you take a point of pain in your life and you think
about how can I create a business that would make this go away.
There are multiple ways to do it.
Maggie's Auto Repair could be an international, could
become an international stamp that cleaned up the
[INAUDIBLE],
the industry.
Or, you can be one garage that build its own reputation.
So here's what I want you to do.
I want you to think about some pain points
that may contain the possibility of new business ideas.
You should feel free to share them on
the discussion forums, but also understand that when
you share them on the
discussion forums your
ideas become public.
[BLANK_AUDIO].
R. Edward FreemanUniversity Professor; Elis and Signe Olsson Professor of Business Administration
