Weekly Reflection - Karan

On October 13th we attended the evening with innovators and had a chance to meet many innovators who had more feedback to offer us than I originally thought we would get. We met Jeff Robinson from JR Consulting Ltd. He cleared up a error on our project plans that could have caused major problems in the sales of our product, was was to be aimed at all fleet vehicles, semi trucks and trailers. By talking to Jeff we realized that not all fleet vehicles are semi related that most companies have cars and small trucks as fleet vehicles. Since fleet vehicles are the quickest way to enter the market without creating multiple types of brake lights we have to rethink our initial plan to create only one kind of brake light, maybe even remodel the entire brake light itself. Jeff also pointed out that since it is a new market we have to break into it in such a way that it would make it difficult for any newcomers to take any market share or knock us completely out of the market, this makes our initial entry method ineffective.

We also met Ian Young, sales executive from IBM, who had more great input for our venture. He pointed out that something we thought to be a potential problem could in fact be a advantage to our product. Our brake light turned on every time there was a reduction in speed or loss of acceleration, this meant it turned on every time a vehicle sped up from zero to the speed limit, and when acceleration was lost. Ian pointed out that this was still a advantage for its advanced warning to following vehicles that may not notice that the vehicle has stopped accelerating, and the more often the brake light turns on the more cautious people will start being. The brake light turning on more often than normal would force people to be more cautious when driving and could potentially decrease rear end collisions overall.

We also got some mixed advice from other guests that were at the event, we were originally advised to manufacture in Toronto giving us the made in Canada, all Canadian company position, but this was ill advised by another guest due to its insanely high manufacturing costs that could potentially put us in a position where someone else could manufacture more overseas at a lower cost and knock us out of the market. Overall we got lots of great advise and even more to think about regarding our venture, we may need to rethink some of our strategies and product design.