SmarkIt Business Plan Pivots

While working on my group business plan project, I began to realize that one of the most valuable lessons learned this semester is the ability to pivot early and often. My group met twice per week, and each meeting resulted in numerous pivots based on new findings from our extensive market research. Had the class not ended, we likely would still be pivoting and perfecting our model. Here are some examples of our pivots and their impacts:

1. We changed our name from Smart Parking Grid to SmarkIt. We realized rather quickly that Smart Parking Grid was more of a philosophy than a business name. SmarkIt was derived from mashing the words "Smart" and "Park" together while adding "It" so we could be used a verb similar to when someone tells you to "Google it".
2. We added Quick Response Code (QR-code) scanning as a payment method and also as an alternative option to implementing the entire SmarkIt technology solution. There are some cities who for budgetary or infrastructure reasons would not want to replace all of their meters with Smart meters. Therefore, we thought we could leverage the QR-code scanning to still add those cities as customers.
3. We started off with a focus on Boston strictly and then expanded to all cities in the U.S. meeting certain population criteria for our target market. Of course, we narrowed down our wedge-in opportunities by removing all cities outside of New England based on our geographic location. We felt it was too risky going to investors with only one municipality as a potential customer, even though Boston wast he logical initial target.
4. Originally, we discussed convincing municipalities to give us a small % of Smart meter revenue, which in turn would convince them to slightly raise hourly rates. We decided to change this to the customer paying service and transaction fees so that the cities do not lose out on anything.

Leadership

For my leadership blog, I decided to go outside the box. Rather than address the specific questions in the assignment, I decided to complete a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). The MBTI is a well-known personality and leadership assessment. I had completed one a few years back during my time as an intern at the Pentagon but cannot remember the results. I thought it may be interesting to go through the exercise again and share the results.

My personality type was "ENTP". According to this, I am extroverted, prefer to deal with potential outcomes rather than analyzing tangible outcomes, prefer to make logical decisions rather than value-based decisions, and prefer to go with the flow rather than be structured. This personality profile matches up with the "change-oriented" leadership style. According to the indicator results, my leadership style can be defined as follows: "A change-oriented leader tries to promote exploration of new and better ways of doing things, or tries to uncover hidden potential in people, things, or situations. Change-oriented leaders work towards a better future by trying things that are new and experimental. Although some of their initiatives may fail, others will succeed."

I would say the MBTI gave a pretty accurate description of how I view my own personal leadership style. I constantly am challenging the status-quo and looking for ways to improve upon many things. I am never shy to provide positive or constructive feedback to those in a position of power (i.e. boss, professor, etc.). Sometimes I think that just because I am always looking for feedback (more constructive than positive since I would rather know things I need to improve on), others always are which has certainly gotten me in trouble a time or two in life!