Final Reflection

Final Reflection

1. With so many assignments in this class to complete, I think that it is easy for everyone to recall their lows and highs. To begin with, I think that one of the best experiences I have had in this class can be seen in my time spent on developing my big opportunity. I realized how passionate I have become about something after working on it for basically this whole length of the semester. My idea to build a pedestrian bridge on Museum Road derived from my experiences driving on this road and dealing with the mayhem, but also was further supported when I began talking to my peers about how change can be made. For my low experience, I think that this came during the middle of the semester when I found myself unable to complete a great assignment because of my time and resource constraints. The Secret Sauce assignment was the only assignment that I failed to complete in this class and I feel like it was one of the worst to miss because I could have learned more about how the people closest to me felt about me and my potential skills.
2. Again, the most formative experience that I had in this class was the time that I spent developing my Pedestrian Bridge. All of the assignments and work that was completed towards the details of my idea will leave a lasting impact that I will remember for many years. I am proud of myself for accomplishing all of these assignments, but in the end I realize that all of my work could be wasted if there is not anything changed to get rid of the traffic congestion and ensure the safety of pedestrians. 
3. At the end of this class, I feel like my entrepreneurial mindset has drastically increased because I am starting to see things in my life as opportunities that could be worked on. Whether it is a random assortment of resources or just something that could be improved, I have noticed that I have definitely changed my mindset with this class. However, I do not think that I will become an entrepreneur at the end of the day because these assignments have made me realize how passionate I can get about something and I am worried that this could hurt my ability to be successful if I create a product that does not get the same kind of support like my first idea did.
4. The biggest piece of advice that I would give to someone that is beginning this class is to complete every single assignment. I think that it is easy to get in the mindset that missing an assignment for whatever reason is not that big of a deal, but when you have a class that is only out of 100 points, it is way more impactful than I first thought. To combat this, I would suggest that students try to make a schedule at the beginning of every week where they can allot the proper amount of time so that they can complete every ENT 3003 assignment. Lastly, I think that it needs to be better communicated on how important the opportunity assignment is because this is something that you deal with all semester. For me, I am happy that I decided to choose something that I was enjoying to work on because it made me think more critically about the information that I was presenting. Altogether, I think that when students find something that they are passionate about, they should focus on it because this can open up the doors for a great future!

Venture Concept No. 2

Pedestrian Bridge over Museum Road between NPB and Reitz Union



Opportunity

The opportunity that I have chosen to identify exists on the University of Florida Campus, specifically along one of the busiest roads, Museum Road. With the University of Florida being a large, connected campus that has many students focusing on doing well in their academics, there is a problem with traffic congestion. There is an area along Museum Road where there are three crosswalks in one intersection between the New Physics Building and the Reitz Union. Given that this is one of the most popular places to travel around, there is a lot of congestion that is created between students as pedestrians traveling to class and people in cars, trucks, and busses trying to drive around campus. As waves of students get out of class and find it necessary to cross the road, this often creates a lot of traffic as people in motor vehicles have to constantly wait for these people to cross. There are two groups of potential customers in this opportunity between UF students walking around campus and people who are operating motor vehicles along Museum Road. The market for my opportunity being addressed is very specific to the University of Florida Campus because I am only trying to solve the problems for people here and nowhere else. Currently, customers are satisfying this need of being able to travel in an efficient amount of time by either leaving earlier for their destination or by driving like maniacs and not giving any regard to the pedestrians crossing the street. The opportunity to build a pedestrian bridge will be here as long as UF stays as populated as it is and people's attitudes about how to deal with traffic does not get any better.


Innovation

The innovation that I am proposing is to address the needs of students, faculty, and bus drivers that want to be able to travel on campus more effectively and efficiently. This need will be addressed with the construction of a pedestrian bridge that goes above Museum Road to lets students cross the road without having to worry about being hit by a driver that is not paying attention. Not only will this pedestrian bridge benefit students walking from class to class, but it will also help drivers because they will no longer have to deal with the frustration of inching up and up in their motor vehicle as people cross the street in an unorderly process. I am unsure of the exact cost that would be required to build a bridge of this sort, but given the fact that we are a top university in the nation, I am sure that money would be able to be directed towards this effort and if not then I would do everything in my power to fundraise for it. This is obviously something that would need to be clearly mapped out before I would be able to get the University on board with building something on campus. I know that I would have to present things to them about the cost of the project and the type of environmental impact that the construction could have, so there would have to be more information collected before I went through with this.



Venture Concept

This concept that I have proposed will make the flow of traffic more efficient and allow people to walk on campus with a better state of mind knowing that their life is not at risk if they decide to cross Museum Road. Currently there are three main problems that arise with the way that things are set up.


1.) Too much traffic is situated in an area that is not prepared to handle the flow of people that it currently handles so people often spend way longer trying to travel through the area then they should. As a result, people are often frustrated and annoyed as they end up either being late to class or have to deal with a student who walks out in front of their motor vehicle.


2.) There are too many distracted drivers, which puts the lives of pedestrians at risk. People should be able to use a crosswalk on their college campus without having to worry about being hit by a car, truck, or bus.


3.) Many people will find a different way to drive on campus which only makes the rest of campus road even more congested with motor vehicles. It's better to solve the main problem at hand then to just spread the congestion across campus.



Customers will see this pedestrian bridge located across Museum Road and understand that this is their safest way of getting across the street in an efficient amount of time. A competitive idea that could be used to solve the traffic flow issue in this area could be to install another street stop light, but this will only frustrate people further as they still have to stop and wait in this area for the light to change green. Everyone will enjoy my concept because they will not only be able to walk from class to class in a safe manner from the pedestrian point of view, but also for the operators of motor vehicles- they will no longer have to worry about being constantly held up from groups of students crossing.


The Three Minor Elements

1.) I believe that my most important resource for this concept is the fact that I am a credible source of information in regards to the problem as a University of Florida student who deals with the same issues as everyone else. It is easier to get someone on board with you when they have the same lifestyle as you do.


2.) I am unsure of what my next venture would be because I have only focused my efforts towards the University of Florida's traffic issues. Maybe I could look to other college campuses that have the same type of traffic flow issue and try to install more pedestrian bridges to keep everyone safe.


3.) Assuming that I have launched and it has been 5 years, I will be doing something that has no connection to my pedestrian bridge opportunity. I am more focused on this now as a student, but 5 years later I will hopefully just be an alumnus who is happy that they have left a helping mark on the university.

Summary of the Feedback

• After reviewing the feedback that I received from my peers, I realize that with the proper presentation of my ideas and details, I have a lot of support. I believe that people could see the passion that I have to get this idea turned into an actual project that can do something good for the University of Florida campus. One of my peer review comments suggested that I may have some difficulty getting the University on board with my idea, but this is something that I think I can try to persuade by talking with the right people in charge and showing them how beneficial this change can be.
• The biggest change that I made in my venture concept was to better address the concern from my peers about getting the University of Florida to agree with the construction. There would be many details that would be have to be sorted out such as when exactly the construction could occur that would be least impactful to the traffic flow on campus and also how expensive it would cost.

Your Exit Strategy

1.) Because my entrepreneurship opportunity is very limited to the University of Florida, I plan to just close my business and move onto other things. I do not see myself making a career out of constructing pedestrian bridges on college campuses, so I think that it would just be best for me to find something else once I accomplish what I'm trying to start. I would just like to see some kind of recognition on the pedestrian bridge for myself if it were actually able to happen, but other than that there is not much more for me to do in this opportunity.

2.) I have selected this particular exit strategy because I want to do other things with my life after I graduate from the University of Florida. Given this specific opportunity that I have worked on, I think that this is more of a one and done thing to solve a problem than anything else.


3.) I think that my exit strategy really has not influenced any of the concepts that I have discussed because my exit is more of a choice than being forced. I worked very hard to come up with different details that would make my idea most beneficial for everyone on the University of Florida campus. The only thing that stands out to me in this situation is that I would be making connections and collecting resources just to complete one thing instead of a future of doing it, so it might be more difficult to acquire resources and people if they know that there is not a long term loyalty associated with it.

Reading Reflection No. 3

Cognitive Surplus by Clay Shirky

1.) The general theme that was discussed throughout the entirety of this book is the idea that with 4.5 billion people in the world, we have a lot of wasted knowledge and ideas because of our choices in lifestyle. Clay Shirky argues that the free time that people have can be better utilized by connecting on the internet rather than spending hours watching television.


2.) The biggest thing that this book connected with in ENT 3003 can be seen with the dynamics of this entire class. As we all know, we have to complete a multitude of assignments that are all posted online on our individual blogs so that other students in the class can see. This structure is similar to the theme that was discussed in Cognitive Surplus because rather than submitting our work to one person, we are making it readily available for other students to view and learn from too. When students are required to peer review each others blog posts, we are able to gain knowledge from the information that is being presented such as information about a book that was part of the reading list, but was not chosen. All of this together goes with this book because we are utilizing the intelligence of all of the students in the class rather than wasting it.


3.) If I had the opportunity to design an exercise for this class that would better illustrate the argument in Cognitive Surplus, it would be constructed as a full week assignment. To further explain, I would create a timesheet for each student so that they could record the amount of hours they spend on various things. Whether a student spends time sleeping, eating, playing video games, watching television, or studying, I would have them note just how much time was spent on this during each day. In this way, after a week of recording the amount of time spent on different things, I would have them tally up each category so that they can have a better understanding of how their time is spent during the week. This activity will help students comprehend just how much time is spent as "leisure time" or even time that is completely wasted, where people could be doing things to better themselves. In the book, Shirky makes a reference to the number of hours people spend watching television and compares it to the amount of time people have spent collaborating information on Wikipedia. When compared, he illustrates how beneficial it is to spend time on the internet sharing ideas and interacting and challenges just how much more productive it could be for our society if more people spent time doing this rather than watching television.

4.) The biggest thing that surprised me in this book is when Shirky created a formula that readers could understand the severity of the issue on hand. I did not realize just how many hours are pent by people during their leisure time with watching television, but it has become something that is highly incorporated into our society. When Shirky was able to compare the time spent watching television to the number of human hours that have been put into collaborating for Wikipedia I was shocked to learn that we could have 2000 Wikipedias every year if time was differently spent.

Celebrating Failure

One time, I experienced failure in this class when I did not plan my schedule accordingly and was unable to complete the "What's Your Secret Sauce?" assignment. For this assignment, we were instructed to interview five different people that know us best and can describe what makes you different from the rest of the people in this world. This would have been a great assignment for me to learn more from the people that I considered close to me as to what they think that I am best at doing or have the best skills for. I failed with the completion of this assignment because I waited too long to interview my friends before the Friday due date came up during the week. Unfortunately, I had to leave town on Thursday to spend time with my family at the beach, so this made it unable for me to be around enough people on campus to interview.

The biggest thing that I learned from my failure here is that I need to plan my schedule  at the beginning of the week so that I give the necessary time to my responsibilities as a student. With the understanding that there are always going to be blog posts due on Friday night every week for this class, I have now learned that it's important to set up a schedule on Sunday before the week gets started. By doing this, I can be most successful so that I will not experience a time where I am scrambling at the last minute to ultimately admit failure.

Failure is something that I do not like experiencing, which is definitely very common for University of Florida students. When I experience failure, it usually makes me realize that I need to change some of the practices that happen on a daily basis so that it never happens again. I also handle failure by being upset emotionally where I will have to take time out and chill and even listen to some motivational music to get me back on track. However, with my known stubbornness, I think that after this class I am still willing to take risks such as waiting till the last minute to complete assignments. For some reason, I sometimes see it as a challenge that I will not be able to complete something by the due date, which I know is not a good habit to get into.

What's Next?

Existing Market

I think that now what is next for me to to try and see if other college campuses deal with the same kind of traffic congestion from many students trying to get from class to class.

1.) This first person I interviewed was Chris, who is a Finance major here at the University of Florida. After discussing my business concept, he told me that he could see this as a great solution to solving the problem at hand and that he wishes that everyone had the type of motivation to solve problems that arise on people's respected campuses. He encouraged me that I should do some research on universities that are larger because they could be dealing with the same issue.

2.) I next spoke with Joseph, who is a Sustainability major at the University of Florida. Given his background as a person who advocates for sustainability, he told me that I should look more into trying to emphasis the use of public transportation more. He made a good point to me that in the long run it could be more sustainable to get more people to use the bus system on campus so that there would not be so many cars on campus and as a result only the buses would deal with pedestrians.

3.) The last person I spoke with was Jamie, who is a marketing major here at the University of Florida. After discussing my plan, he told me that I need to do a better job of publicizing my ideas so that more people become of the problem at hand. He told me that he believes that if I were to draw more attention to this topic, then the University might be more willing to spend money to make changes or even make other universities more aware of how to keep their college students safe as pedestrians.

After questioning these people, I believe that I have a bag of mixed decisions that I could make for my future. There are many paths that could be taken in regards to my pedestrian bridge venture, but I realized how many more details I need to address. Altogether, I think what makes most sense for my future is to try to expand my efforts here at the University of Florida to other large universities. I realize that with some good marketing skills, I could persuade more people to recognize how beneficial pedestrian bridges can actually be.

New Market

After thinking about a radically different market from the University of Florida campus, I thought about a college back at home that I am very familiar with. Being from Tallahassee, I am aware of how different FAMU is compared to UF. Given this, I had to contact some of my old friends who are currently attending this school.

Once I identified this new market, I started thinking about the dynamics of FAMU's campus. Given that they have a much smaller population of students at 11,000, I realized that there would be a significantly less number of students traveling around on campus. However, I also realized that there is much more land covered from UF compared to FAMU, so things could still get very congested even with a lesser population of students.

The first person I asked was my friend David, who is also a business major at FAMU and is very involved on campus. He told me that he does not believe that FAMU has quite the traffic issue that I described to him as Florida has. However, he did state that many students have their own vehicle to drive around campus so he could still see some major areas on campus where things could be better off with the installation of this bridge.

The next person I interviewed was my friend Willis, who is a student athlete at FAMU. After discussing with him about extending my business concept to FAMU, he told me that he believed students would feel more safe on campus if they knew they could cross the street without having to worry about motor vehicles. He noted how there are a couple pedestrian bridges that he knows of around Tallahassee, but thinks that my bridge does not need to be of that same magnitude in order to be successful on campus.


After learning about this new market, I have now realized how much more beneficial pedestrian bridges could be on many college campuses. Given the frequent number of pedestrians on any campus, it is important that I make sure they feel safe while they are trying to earn their degree. I found it quite interesting to realize how if you look at FAMU proportionally for their population size and school acreage, then congestion can still arise. However, I still think that my original market is the best because I have never firsthand experienced an issue on FAMU's campus like I have at the University of Florida.

Venture Concept No. 1

Pedestrian Bridge over Museum Road between NPB and Reitz Union


Opportunity

The opportunity that I have chosen to identify exists on the University of Florida Campus, specifically along one of the busiest roads, Museum Road. With the University of Florida being a large, connected campus that has many students focusing on doing well in their academics, there is a problem with traffic congestion. There is an area along Museum Road where there are three crosswalks in one intersection between the New Physics Building and the Reitz Union. Given that this is one of the most popular places to travel around, there is a lot of congestion that is created between students as pedestrians traveling to class and people in cars, trucks, and busses trying to drive around campus. As waves of students get out of class and find it necessary to cross the road, this often creates a lot of traffic as people in motor vehicles have to constantly wait for these people to cross. There are two groups of potential customers in this opportunity between UF students walking around campus and people who are operating motor vehicles along Museum Road. The market for my opportunity being addressed is very specific to the University of Florida Campus because I am only trying to solve the problems for people here and nowhere else. Currently, customers are satisfying this need of being able to travel in an efficient amount of time by either leaving earlier for their destination or by driving like maniacs and not giving any regard to the pedestrians crossing the street. The opportunity to build a pedestrian bridge will be here as long as UF stays as populated as it is and people's attitudes about how to deal with traffic does not get any better.


Innovation

The innovation that I am proposing is to address the needs of students, faculty, and bus drivers that want to be able to travel on campus more effectively and efficiently. This need will be addressed with the construction of a pedestrian bridge that goes above Museum Road to lets students cross the road without having to worry about being hit by a driver that is not paying attention. Not only will this pedestrian bridge benefit students walking from class to class, but it will also help drivers because they will no longer have to deal with the frustration of inching up and up in their motor vehicle as people cross the street in an unorderly process. I am unsure of the exact cost that would be required to build a bridge of this sort, but given the fact that we are a top university in the nation, I am sure that money would be able to be directed towards this effort and if not then I would do everything in my power to fundraise for it. This is obviously something that would need to be clearly mapped out before I would be able to get the University on board with building something on campus.



Venture Concept

This concept that I have proposed will make the flow of traffic more efficient and allow people to walk on campus with a better state of mind knowing that their life is not at risk if they decide to cross Museum Road. Currently there are three main problems that arise with the way that things are set up.

1.) Too much traffic is situated in an area that is not prepared to handle the flow of people that it currently handles so people often spend way longer trying to travel through the area then they should. As a result, people are often frustrated and annoyed as they end up either being late to class or have to deal with a student who walks out in front of their motor vehicle.

2.) There are too many distracted drivers, which puts the lives of pedestrians at risk. People should be able to use a crosswalk on their college campus without having to worry about being hit by a car, truck, or bus.

3.) Many people will find a different way to drive on campus which only makes the rest of campus road even more congested with motor vehicles. It's better to solve the main problem at hand then to just spread the congestion across campus.

Customers will see this pedestrian bridge located across Museum Road and understand that this is their safest way of getting across the street in an efficient amount of time. A competitive idea that could be used to solve the traffic flow issue in this area could be to install another street stop light, but this will only frustrate people further as they still have to stop and wait in this area for the light to change green. Everyone will enjoy my concept because they will not only be able to walk from class to class in a safe manner from the pedestrian point of view, but also for the operators of motor vehicles- they will no longer have to worry about being constantly held up from groups of students crossing.


The Three Minor Elements

1.) I believe that my most important resource for this concept is the fact that I am a credible source of information in regards to the problem as a University of Florida student who deals with the same issues as everyone else. It is easier to get someone on board with you when they have the same lifestyle as you do.

2.) I am unsure of what my next venture would be because I have only focused my efforts towards the University of Florida's traffic issues. Maybe I could look to other college campuses that have the same type of traffic flow issue and try to install more pedestrian bridges to keep everyone safe.

3.) Assuming that I have launched and it has been 5 years, I will be doing something that has no connection to my pedestrian bridge opportunity. I am more focused on this now as a student, but 5 years later I will hopefully just be an alumnus who is happy that they have left a helping mark on the university.