Week 4 Reading Reflection

Weekly reflection! Here we go:

1  What kind of surprised me was how many sources of innovative ideas entrepreneurs look at for ideas. For instance, “incongruities” was super interesting, because it’s defined as the gap between expectations and reality. What kind of strikes me is that a person has to be insanely creative, like, a box of thoughts doesn’t even exist to think outside of because they’re just in another world.

2.      Nothing was really confusing other than why people would think innovation is planned. Maybe it’s because I grew up in an era where the wildly successful people made it big after coming up with a wildly successful idea, but it seems like innovation is the cross between opportunity and hard work.

3.      If I had to ask the author a question, it would be: out of the principles of innovation, which one do you consider to be the most necessary one to set up for innovation? Like if they had to choose.

4.      I don’t think there was anything in particular that I disagreed with. It was very straightforward, and presented information in a very factual sense. I really like how the author actually listed things and mindsets that hinder growth as an entrepreneur. 

Customer Interviews No. 1

SO. Even as a journalist, I get nervous interviewing people. Some of these are friends of friends (I didn't know them until today so that counts, right?) and others are strangers I walked up to. I was honest, and I did cut down the videos and just made sure to record that they agreed to be recorded (I usually do that when I interview people). I asked them mostly about what pains them, and little irks about them. And I specifically asked them about parking, because that came up almost always immediately. And then I found the opportunity: a possible parking garage for more student parking! The kinds of people that have a problem with parking at UF are students and faculty.

   

I found the opportunity to ask them about UF parking because I myself have difficulty finding parking! It's a pain. And I learned that it is a shared feeling. To be honest, I've gotten good at asking the right questions, so I didn't come up with a list. For this, I started very general and pinpointed the issue. The hard part came was finding customers. In this case, these are people trying to buy parking on campus, essentially. People, students, who pay for tuition, and now have to pay for decals in order to park, well, anywhere! Unless you love far off-campus...

So yeah. This was my experience interviewing people. It was awkward and strange, but in the end, they were pretty irked by UF parking.