Amazon Whisperer

Currently my only revenue drivers are customers that come into my bakery and order a product.
I think the next thing I should offer would be catering service or large order service. So if someone was, say, a vegan, and was getting married a needed a wedding cake, they could order such a large product from my bakery that would be 100% vegan friendly. Or, if the same person was getting ready for their wedding and was having a bachelorette party and wanted an order of different sweets for a dessert table, they could place such a large order and have it delivered to them for their convenience. Going off of this catering service, to make our catering different than your typical delivery, we would set up and bring our own placement, such as decorative three-tiered stand and other cute decorative pieces to make for a nice dessert set-up.
I believe this service of setting up and bringing our own place settings will relieve the stress of customers as planning any event is stressful enough; this service will allow our business to be different and better liked by customers. This will incur customer loyalty and outreach as word gets around at how pleasant their customer experience was with my bakery and will tell more and more people. This should also help slightly in sales at the actual shop as new customers that heard about a good catering service will stop by the shop for their first time and probably try the product before placing for a large order.
I did an Amazon search to see what products were sold on Amazon that were similar to my product and this is what I found:

• For gluten free:
• I found a brand that sold different bakery mixes that were gluten-free called Bona Dea. I also found an all-purpose baking mix by a brand called "Wholesome Chow" (the mix was also organic).

• For sugar-free:
• I found two products that were somewhat similar to my product; a Pillsbury sugar-free devil's food cake mix and a recipe book called "Baking with Less Sugar."
• For vegan:
• I found the only product I found was a cook book called "Chloe's Vegan Desserts." There were couple of products similar to this, but all cook books, no other product assortment.
  

For the reviews:

• For the gluten-free products I found that the the blueberry muffins mix was rather successful with an overall rating of 3.9 out of 5 stars and almost all of the reviews I read were positive. The all-purpose baking mix was also a raging success with an overall rating of 4 and many positive reviews to follow.
• For the sugar-free products I found the the Pillsbury cake mix was rather successful in its reviews. It had an overall rating of 4.2 out of 5 stars and many of the reviews I read said the cake was delicious. For the "Baking with Less Sugar" cook book, the overall rating was 4.1 stars and many reviews were raving out how yummy the desserts were. Some of the "bad" reviews were more based on how the product wasn't "no sugar," but "less sugar."
• For the vegan cook book, the overall rating for this product was a 4.5 out of stars, but from the first couple of reviews I read, I saw mixed decisions. A couple people said the brownies were greasy, and other things too sweet, etc.

Because these products aren't exactly the same as my product, I couldn't make many changes to them based off of the reviews. However, the few things I would take into account for my business would include maybe an alternative to sugar supplements, such as Splenda, as these supplements tend to make customers gassy, which was the only bad reviews I read of the sugar-free products. For the gluten-free, many of the reviews talked about how "wheat flour was supposed to taste," and that the product either did it correctly or failed, so I would be sure to focus on making the flour taste "real." Lastly, for my vegan products, I don't think I'd have the problems that many people complained about because in my bakery we would keep trying different recipes and measurements until we found one that was just right, and not too greasy or overly sweet.

Week 11 Reading Reflection

The first thing that surprised me right away was Pisano's statement that the reason for failure in innovation and in it's continuous success is that there is a lack of innovation stagey. I would not have guessed this as our textbook is constantly describing all these different strategies for every area of innovation that studies have found for its success.
Nothing in this reading was confusing. I really enjoyed the reading and thought it was well-written because the author separated all of his different ideas into short subcategories, and continuously explained what he points were through real life examples that people knew of or could relate to. This allowed the article to become interesting as it connected to my real-life knowledge, as well as allowed me to thoroughly understand what Pisano was trying to explain. If I had to choose one confusing part, the section on "Managing Trade-Offs" and about crowdsurfing was a little bit confusing because it wasn't as short and simple as the other parts of the article, and I'm not really sure if I understood why you should sometimes use this method and sometimes not.
In the case when the author talked about his time he spent working with a contact lenses company, I am curious to know if we were ever to be in a similar situation how we would know if we were wasting our time and how we could find the root of the problem before spending all this time and money on a failed innovation, as the contact lenses company did. I also am curious how you can know when you're innovation has gone too far from a population's open-mindedness. How do you know if you're product is pushing the limits of their imagination too far to the point that they won't want to risk it? Is this as easy to discover via surveys, or is it much bigger and trickier than this?
As much as I do think Apple and/or Steve Jobs are definitely innovators to look up to, I don't know if I agreed with the author's argument that crowdsourcing doesn't always work. I think Steve Jobs was a true genius, innovator and risk-taker, which most people aren't and I think it's rare for the choices he made to actually work. The author brings up a rather well-known quote from Steve Jobs in which he commonly said that people don't know what they want, but I think it's still important to utilize crowd-sourcing before introducing something just to get an idea for where your crowd will be in accordance to the liking of your product. Sometimes it's good to smart with something small that population might only slightly realize they want, and build up from there to things, as Jobs says, that they don't even know they want.

My Unfair Advantage

1. People skills/ability to read people
• Valuable: Being able to connect to people is how I can maintain excellent customer service. 
• Rare: Many business owners are too logical, and usually not good with talking to people and being social.
• Inimitable: Having good people skills and being able to truly read and understand people is not something you can really learn. If you want to learn this, it's very difficult, more more commonly you're just born with this skill; it's all in the way your mind thinks.
• Non-substitutable: It's almost impossible to create good customer service if you can't read people. How can you give your customers the best experience possible if you don't understand them and know what they want?
2. Familial background
• Valuable: Because of my personal connection to certain dietary restrictions, I have passion and determination to create a place where no matter what you can and cannot eat, you can come together to eat and bond together.
• Rare: Not everyone has a personal connection to such issues.
• Inimitable: You either have such a connection and drive to a mission or don't, those that don't have a personal relation to such an issue won't be willing to work as hard at fixing it. 
• Non-substitutable: The more passionate you are about a topic, the more willing you are to work towards a solution, the closer the issue is to you personally, the more passionate you feel about it. This sense of connection and passion are traits only I posses.
3. Network/connections
• Valuable: Knowing people in the industry will give me an endless supply of tips and possible connections to other people I may need to know. This also shows that there is already a market that exists for my type of business.
• Rare: The people I know may differ from the people that someone who is trying to open a similar shop knows. My unique group of people that I know may give me an upper hand.
• Inimitable: Knowing more people means I have a broad understanding of what already exits, which means I know what not to copy because it won't make my business different.
• Non-substitutable: Knowing a certain person is irreplaceable. There's no telling what a certain person I may know could do for me and my business. They could surprise me and help me in more ways than I even originally thought.
4. Passion
• Valuable: A passionate person means a hard-working owner. The more passion someone has, the more they're going to want to and work towards the success of their business.
• Rare: In a growing corporate world, the factors of passion and care are becoming less and less common, but people like these traits and react positively to those businesses that can show they have these characteristics.
• Inimitable: You cannot imitate passion. You either care or you don't. Fake passion is more easy to see through than water. 
• Non-substitutable: Passion creates an outcome for success of a business like no other. 
5. Knowledge
• Valuable: Recipes I may know, the people skills I may have, the imagination I may have or the people I may know,  this is all my knowledge of an industry and what will work.  
• Rare: Only you hold the specific mixture of things you know. Many people may know the same things as you, but you may know a better way to apply these thoughts all together.
• Inimitable: There's a famous saying that the only thing that no one can take away from you is your education, well this is true and exactly what makes you exact education and background unique from any other. 
• Non-substitutable: There's nothing that can be more important than the knowledge you may know to help build the success for your business.
6. Creativity
• Valuable: Creativity and knowledge go hand in hand, you can be very smart, but without anything interesting pertaining to your business, it can be dry and unpopular. But with too much creativity and not enough knowledge, customers may be drawn in, but ultimately left disappointed. I believe the key to a successful business and a balance of both of these resources.
• Rare: Creativity is a rarity because even if two people both consider themselves "creative," these actions can play out in different ways. One could say blue walls, the other could say yellow walls, it's all different and unique.
• Inimitable: Something that is truly unique and original cannot be imitated. Even if another were to copy and idea, once an idea is out there, it usually can be recognized when being copied. Especially with things like social media now, word can get around fast.
• Non-substitutable: The popularity of a business can be based on the creativity of its owner(s) alone. The more different a business is, the more likely customers are to be drawn to it.
7. Logical
• Valuable: Logical is similar to knowledge, because without this trait, your business may suffer due to lack of awareness.  
• Rare: Many people that have a passion and drive for a topic can usually get lost in the heart-ache of it all and start going against their logical thinking. I tend to truly listen to my logical voice over any other.
• Inimitable: Logic isn't a skill to imitate, you either are aware of things or aren't, and listen to this thinking or don't.
• Non-substitutable: Without thinking of the logistics to your business, there's very little possibility for its success. You need to be able to be passionate about an idea without entering into the dream world.
8. Organization
• Valuable: The more organized you are, the more prepared you can be and the more space there is for you business to grow.
• Rare: I think that this isn't exactly "rare," but it's not common. I think about 50% of people are organized and the other 50% is disarrayed.
• Inimitable: Organization is imitable, many people follow the same organizational methods.
• Non-substitutable: Though organization is nothing new or rare, it still allows for the growth and success of a business.
9. Hard-working
• Valuable: A hard-working person is necessary in the start of a business, especially a business that may be different from others that already exist as they will have to really work to stand out and draw a crowd to the unfamiliar.
• Rare: Many people may be hard-working, but what that means vary and it is important to not just work hard, but to see the results of those actions.
• Inimitable: It's hard to just say you're going to be hard-working. Most people either have what it takes to work hard or don't and those that don't but want to usually find it is very hard to change that about themselves.
• Non-substitutable: This is so important for a new business because you have no following yet so you have to work for that following. But once you have this, the job doesn't all of a sudden become a lot easier, you must still work hard to keep the following and grow.
10. Save money
• Valuable: Saving money can be very beneficial for a business because of any money I've already saved to open this business as well as once my business is open saving money at all possible ends can leave space for my company to grow.
• Rare: I think that many people, especially in today's society, don't know how to save money and struggle with the self-restraint to do so.
• Inimitable: Many people will try to imitate this, but the ways in which every person decides to save money are different. 
• Non-substitutable: This is essential for a new business to be able to know where to cut ends or tricks you already know on how to save money.

I think my people skills is my top resource, which can be seen in my secret sauce interviews as many of my friends and family highlight this trait as what makes me unique. In today's society, people value customer service and a person's social skills above almost all else. My ability to read people can only help my business gain a following and the support it needs.