Alex Clouser- Venture Concept No. 1 Assignment 24

My potential opportunity is in the data collection industry. The nature of this need is to have a data collection system that collects data effectively and securely because a lot of people have fears about the safety of their privacy with regards to data collection. My target consumer would be in the retail industry because they rely on data collection to further their business and their marketing exploits. The forces that are creating this opportunity are the public distrust and the overall attitude towards data collection and how it is invasive to consumers private data. I believe that the opportunity is long term because I think it will take a long time to change this public attitude towards data collection. I think that this is a big opportunity because of the lack of available alternatives to current data collection methods.

My innovation would be new data collection methods that do not invade people's privacy and make them feel better about the action of data collection. This innovation would make data collection more indirect through things such as promos or holiday gift guides or other things of the like. It works through people interacting with the product, such as ordering things from the holiday gift guide or participating in a special promo which gives you a certain bonus during a specific criteria, such as a discount when you shop on your birthday, or something of the like. I do not know yet the pricing criteria for my innovation, but I wouldn't make it too expensive because then no company would want to buy it.

The data collected from this interaction is then processed by the retailer and used to improve their next holiday gift guides with popular items purchased, improve their marketing campaigns, and gives them the ability to help better serve their customers with things that they want. This will help to ease consumer attitude towards data collection by not being invasive, yet also still help companies to further their future ventures. Companies will buy my product because they will gain positive publicity for actively trying to change their data collection methods and will not get as much public backlash as other companies have been getting in recent years because of the non-invasive quality of my methods.

I believe that my most important resource is my connections to people in the retail industry because that can benefit my venture the most and is also hard for other companies to replicate. What is next for my venture is to further expand my data collection methods and to continue to come up with new ways that are not invasive to collect data. To be honest, in 5 to 10 years I would like to see my venture become successful and would really like to sell my venture for a hefty sum of money because then I could put my energy into something less time consuming than running a business and would be able to focus on my other life goals that I have.