I&E 352: Strategies for Innovation and Entrepreneurship
The course covers component elements of developing skills needed to launch a venture. Starting at the point of need identification, the course covers lean methodology; innovation and entrepreneurship strategy; creating needed financing and resource structures; effectively marketing/communicating innovation and its associated benefits; leading, managing, and working effectively within teams; creating a positive and ethical work culture; and evaluating success.
What I Learned From I&E 352
When I started this course in late August, I only had a vague idea of what it took to be a
successful innovator and entrepreneur. Throughout the semester, I learned not only financial analysis
skills for entrepreneurship, but also how to approach problems with a user-centered approach, use
frameworks for evaluating entrepreneurial ideas, and better collaborate on teams in a positive culture
Perhaps the most important thing I learned from the course is that at its core, entrepreneurship
is about solving problems. For a product or service to be successful, it must be good at solving a
particular need that exists in the market. This all starts with identifying potential opportunities and
validating those findings through sound methodology. This may include some market research, but the
most useful metric would be real-world testing results. An example explored during this course was that
of Rent the Runway (RTR). RTR is a company centered around an online rental service that enables
young women to afford luxury brands without paying retail prices. When the founders of the company
initially scoped out their idea, they recognized an unmet need in the apparel market for dress rentals
that offered value, convenience, and confidence. They also realized that ecommerce and online
shopping were trends that they could take advantage of when delivering upon their value propositions.
One of the most important factors to RTR’s success was its strategic hypothesis-driven approach to
business. Instead of launching their full service immediately, the founders of the company decided to
first test their hypothesis with a minimum viable product (MVP) to an audience of college students. As
their platform targeted younger consumers, this strategy made sense as it allowed them to have the
option open to pivot if needed. After a series of successful tests, they had gathered enough evidence to
justify expanding to a full launch of their platform. These initial tests were what enabled them to
proceed with confidence; in fact, their service was so popular that they had initial troubles of keeping up
with the demand.
From this course, I have learned that the strongest indicators of validated demand are actual
results in terms of sales and satisfaction. An example where this was executed poorly was that of Sinclair
Research’s C5 personal mobility product. Unlike RTR, they did not do small-batch MVP testing to
validate their hypothesis on consumer demand for their product. Instead, they had only done some
broad market research in established industries that were only tangentially related to their C5 product
that was in its own category. In the end, their product launch was a massive failure, and the C5 never
gained traction. Most importantly, Sinclair Research never had the opportunity to pivot to a new
product, because they did not have any research data to use for improvement.
In addition to recognizing and validating demand, building an effective team is crucial to
creating a successful innovative organization. Rarely can a single person handle all aspects of building a
company. Best practices for building a strong organization include clear expectations for everyone,
tangible goals, and open communication between members. These practices would help to establish the
framework of open collaboration and exchange of ideas, while team member work productively toward
the organization’s goals. An example that that demonstrates a dysfunctional team from this course was
that of Florida Air. In this case, the founder of the company had made many mistakes, such as not
formalizing ownership agreements early on, failing to set expectations for all key members of the team,
and not being able to recover from setbacks due to ineffective communication. When expectations of a
project’s progress deviates amongst team members (both in goals and execution), that is when it is most
likely for conflict to occur within a team. Maintaining effective communication between team members
in an open and constructive manner is the solution to working towards operating as an effective team. If
I were in a similar situation as the founder of Florida Air, I would immediately begin to initiate effective
dialogue with all team members, with empathy in mind. My goal would be to reorient all team members
in pursuit of the same mission, as well as smaller tangible milestones. I would follow-up with regularly
scheduled check-ins to gather feedback and improve plans moving forward based on the expertise of my
team. In my personal experience through the course as I worked on different teams, I found that in
addition to these principles, actively taking leadership and communicating by example are also two
strategies that helped us work more effectively. For example, when starting new projects, I found it
helpful to sometimes be the one to initiate the discussion and help the team stay on track. When
presenting ideas, I found that speaking about them often times were not enough to fully get the idea
across; instead, diagrams and quantitative evidence were very helpful in supporting a particular stance.
These are strategies that I hope to continue to use as I work on various teams moving forward in my
career.
Finally, I learned that an underlying principle for all innovators and entrepreneurs should be to
create positive and ethical cultures. Initially when I started this course, I believed that the sole goal of a
business should be to create profit and generate revenue from captured value in the market in some
way. However, through the course I learned that this was only somewhat accurate. The other part of the
equation is to also consider the human and ethical factors involved with all business decisions, and not
just profit. Entrepreneurs should seek to generate value based on human values of empathy,
sustainability, and inclusion, in order to make a positive difference in the world. A company that does
this well is EnviroFit, which started out as a non-profit with the mission to make stoves for the
developing world that is both beneficial to health and the natural environment. Ethical missions like
these not only help to orient a company in a way that is morally correct; they also motivate all members
of the organization to work toward a goal that they see as valuable, and attract customers who value
the same things.
Overall, this course has been a transformative experience for me as I progress through the
Innovation and Entrepreneurship program at Duke and seek to combine my engineering background
with skills in business. My ultimate career goal includes creating engineering-based products and
solutions to help people and organizations better connect with each other and achieve their full
potential. Many of the topics touched upon by this course are incredibly useful in how I approach future
work and educational experiences. I would be equipped with new skills and frameworks to ideate,
investigate, and execute upon innovative ideas. Furthermore, I have learned more about what it takes to
create effective teams and become a better leader, which would be applicable no matter which career
path I pursue. When I work toward future internships, for example, I would seek to tackle problems with
more of a user-centered approach (rather than engineering-centered) and have a multi-faceted strategy.
The communication and writing skills I have further honed through this course would allow me to be a
better communicator, which would benefit me both professionally and also in inter-personal
relationships. Finally, next year I hope to finish my college career by taking the I&E Capstone course,
which would allow me to put all that I have learned in my four years in college (across all subjects) into a
project that I am proud of.
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