Week #3- Book

This past week, I have continued to read Creating Innovators by Tony Wagner.  After talking about innovators from our generation that created businesses and for-profit inventions and services, he now switched to show how social innovators are helping lead the non-profit world to innovation and social entrepreneurship. One part of the book that was really interesting and resonated with me was when he discusses how Tulane University has changed its beliefs to focus on community service applications to help New Orleans.  After Katrina, the city was in disrepair, and Tulane took a new approach to service and social justice.  One of the reasons I applied to Tulane was that I enjoyed Tulane's message of service.  It is one of the few schools in the country that have a necessary community service credit to graduate.  According to the book I am not alone; the number of applications has doubled since they added this requirement, and the school is receiving more highly-qualified teachers than ever before. Although Katrina was a decade ago, New Orleans still has a lot of problems and I know there are hundreds of opportunities for social innovation.

Wagner also talked about a couple students that have created different programs and non-profits to help the communities which they live in.  One of the girls was a high-school drop-out, but because she could connect with the students she worked with, she was able to use their thinking and culture to take them off the streets.  I think this is a really interesting way of looking at community service.  Wagner mentions that the person understands what is "cool", and this allowed her to make safe, legal activities "cool" too.  Another idea that Wagner continues to mention is how these leaders reached the place they are now.  While the earlier examples were members of the upper-middle class, these non-profit starters were sometimes growing up in the ghettos of New York and Chicago.  Wagner argues that it is all about having someone older or with more knowledge telling you too take a risk, or giving you permission to try.  This all connects with this idea of failure, and how schools are teaching failure is not allowed.  What schools really should be teaching is that failure is good, and should be accepted, as long as you learn from your failures and can figure out why you failed.  If students were taught to try and fail and try again, more students would grow up as social innovators or just be more successful in general.  This is avery interesting idea that Wagner argues and I believe there is a lot of truth behind it.  The hard part is implementing it.  It would be an entire change in the culture of American education; something that would take decades to change.        

Week #3- In Class

This past week has been filled with selling and marketing the calendars.  As of today, we have sold 32 calendars equalling $480 in revenue.  At the beginning of the project, we had decided to buy 100 calendars for $533, so we only need to sell 4 more to make profit.  We are really close, but at the same time, I know our group still has a lot of work to do.   Winter vacation is in a few days, and when we come back to school, it will already be past the new year and christmas.  People will no longer need gifts for the holidays, and most will already own a calendar for the 2015 year.  Looking back, I wish our group had just bough the 25 package or the 50 package.  I think we would have made more profit and not have a few dozen calendars lying around.  Even still, I believe we will sell a couple dozen more, and have no doubt that we will make at least a couple hundred dollars for the Athletic Department.

This past week, my group and I took a risk that I believed paid off.  The first two weeks, we marketed the calendars by using posters and social media.  This week, we decided we could reach the entire market of teachers easily if we spread the word through the teacher email system.  When Clay and I designed the new posters which featured model Kate Upton and Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski,  I knew there were going to be people (especially teachers) that would not find our marketing strategy amusing or even appropriate.  At the same time, I really did not care because I knew that we were not breaking an rules and it was a strategy hundreds of professional companies have done before.  Nothing spreads faster than a little controversial marketing.  And it worked- a couple teachers contacted us to buy calendars!  I think this entire project has been a great learning experience and I regret none of my actions.

Week #2- Book

This past week, I have continued to read the book Creating innovators by Tony Wagner.  I just finished chapters three and four and am beginning to enjoy the different stories he tells.  In one chapter, he tells the stories of four different innovators that created real change in the world while making money and a name for themselves.  From special dirt to modified bikes, the inventions created were mainly used to help third-world countries solve problems that were literally killing thousands of people a year.  After telling each story, Wagner would then analyze how these kids grew up and what led to their innovation and success.  Some themes I noticed he kept bringing up was how the parents allowed their children to "do what they wanted to do" and not to shut down creativity or passions at a young age. Another theme Wagner loved to point out was how teachers were rarely the reason for the success of theses students.  The few teachers that were mentioned were seen as outliers at the universities and did not have tenures or full funding.  These teachers mainly taught innovation labs and other hands-on, project-based classes.

These classes that Wagner kept talking about reminded a lot about our own class Communications for Entrepreneurs.  I feel like I have learned how to apply my knowledge in this class versus AP classes where I am just absorbing information.  The $200 dollar project is a great example of this because I have used real networking and marketing skills to make actual profit.  While I am lucky to live in Brookline where classes like these are not frowned upon, most school systems in American would not always support this type of class.  Overall, Wagner's main point from telling all these stories was that if we want our next generation to make a real difference, we need to support their ideas and help them find purpose in their work.  Some cool ideas!

Week #2- In Class

This past week has been very exciting because the calendars we ordered last week finally arrived on Thursday.  They looked so good and we have gotten tons of compliments.  Everyone keeps stopping me in the hallways to "see the pictures", which is both good and bad.  It means the word is getting around that we are selling the calendars, but most students have no interest in buying them- just looking at their pictures.  Even still, I was able to sell $90 of calendars (6 total) on the first day.  Everyone in my group took half a dozen calendars over the weekend to sell them.  My goal is to sell at least 75 before break, and if everyone in my group sells 3 a day, we will reach it.  Some ways I believe we can reach different markets is to sell at sporting events.  The next Superfan Game of the Week is next Friday for Boys Basketball vs Wellesley.  I know we can sell a lot to the parents and spectators at the game.  I have also been getting teachers and faculty at the school to buy them.  I know that a lot of teachers hang up cool calendars in their classrooms and ours is perfect for that.  I am also convincing students to buy them as gifts for family members for the holidays.  It is definitely hard selling products like this, especially when they are over priced at $15 a unit, but I know we can do it.  A lot of people have asked why we choose to sell them so expensive.  I think if someone will buy our product, the difference of 10 or 15 dollars will not be the difference if they buy it or not- so why not bring in 500 extra dollars of revenue.
Besides selling the calendars, my group has also been working on the Storefront project.  We decided to create a coffee shop combined with a studying center centered toward students and teachers.  We finished parts 4-6 and have created a business plan that will bring in positive revenue.  We also created a blueprint of the building to decide how we will design the interior.  I also learned that my dad is coming in next week to talk about architecture stuff to different groups.  That should be interesting!

Week #1- Book

This past week, I picked the book Creating Innovators by Tony Wagner.  After reading the first two chapters, I have realized this book is centered around different ways American society and education systems can change their habits and systems to increase innovation and lead to a stronger economy.  Wagner continues to argue that innovation is the number one catalyst for a better economy, and points to many examples of how new ideas lead to prosperity.  Wagner also focuses on the next generation, the "Young People Who Will Change the World" as it says on the cover.  He uses the word "twentysomethings" to describe this next generation, a group he says was born thinking differently- a group who wants to make an impact now and not in 20 years.  One piece of the book that i thought was interesting was that he tried to be "innovative" by placing Microsoft tags throughout the book that would create hyperlinks on smart phones.  He had teamed up with a younger entrepreneur who helped him with this technology, but when i tried to access the links with my phone, they all were no longer active.  Pretty ironic since the book was published in 2012.

One piece of the book I though was interesting so far was the three pieces necessary to create creativity.  This idea was no his, he was just adding his own insight to an article written by Dr. Teresa Amabile, the director of research at Harvard Business School.  Amabile argues the three pieces to creativity are Expertise, Creative Thinking Skills, and Motivation.  She believes expertise and creative thinking skills are more knowledge based- something taught so an individual can ask the right questions.  She believes motivation, however, is the most important of the three because it is what creates the passion and drive to become an innovator.  She argues there are two types of motivation, external and internal, with internal being much more efficient.  Lastly, she argues that in order for an individual to have an internal motivation to create innovation, they need to experience play, purpose, and passion.  Wagner doubles down on these statement, showing that when our next generation are taught to play, ask questions, and stick with what they believe in when they are young, our next generation will be more innovative than ever before.  And I agree 100% with those findings.  I see first hand that the students with the most creativity are the ones who are not interested in getting the right answer, but the process to get any answer.  I wish i was more creative sometimes, and I believe it is partly from my childhood of focusing on getting good grades instead of the knowledge itself.  Some interesting stuff.  Good book so far.

Week #1- In Class

This past week, I have been very active in working on my group's $200 Project.  On Monday, we finalized the idea that we would design, print, and sell Brookline High School Athletic calendars.  I then met later that day with Mr. Williams and Mr. Rittenburg, the Assistance Director and Director of the Athletic program at BHS.  They both loved the idea, and Mr. Williams told me that if they looked good, he would invest more money so our group could make additional profit.  I also let them know that all of our profit from the calendars would go directly to the Athletic program.  When I got home that day, I began to do some research to figure out the costs and margins of profit for this project.  When I discovered VistaPrint would sell a calendar for less than $6 a unit, I realized how profitable this project could become.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, I spent a few hours combined finding good pictures to put into the calendar.  I had to make sure we did not infringe on any privacy problems or copyright issues, so I only found a dozen pictures I could use.  Our group had decided we would put 4-5 pictures per month (1 sport) for all 12 months (12 total sports), with a total of 48-60 photos.  I used some contacts in the school, including Mr. Butchart and Mr. Williams, and discovered that CJ's father had created the slideshow of pictures for the varsity Banquet last spring.  CJ got me the pictures on Thursday, and by Friday morning Mr. Fischer and I were ordering 100 calendars.  Mr. Williams invested $330 for this to happen, but with a maximum profit of $970, it is a very sound investment.

The calendars should hopefully be arriving at the high school by next Friday (12/12/14), and we need to sell at least 36 to make profit.  That gives us 11 days, which I believe my group, with the help of Superfans and the Athletic Department, will be very possible.  This entire project has been a ton of fun and I am passionate about this work because it is using the Logo that I had helped create last month.