Edinburgh Rock Whisky Business - Essay Example

Edinburgh Rock Whisky Business Executive summary This article is about Edinburgh Rock Whisky, which is a start-up business. Its owner and co-founder is Alan Grahams. The whiskey company is located at Edinburgh, Scotland. The article views various decisions that Alan Graham made and which of them are considered wrong. It also adds on what Graham should have done. The various issues that are reviewed in the essay include, theories of creativity, team performance, customer development model and opportunity spotting. Introduction Alan Graham considers himself an entrepreneur and it is because of this that he decides to venture in a mission to start his own brand of whisky. Alan cannot find the appropriate bottling company hence invests his money to achieve his dreams. He however faces a great deal of challenges. The challenges that Alan Graham faces are linked to the fact he lacks the advanced knowledge on how to venture in to one’s entrepreneurial dreams. Initial business idea. When Alan Graham was in South Africa, he happened to meet a friend of his who had managed to create a fortune for himself in the whisky industry. Graham’s friend had managed to do this by introducing a whisky by the name Mountain Range Whisky. The whisky was in a bottle that was shaped as the Table Mountain, the mountain that shadows Cape Town. Graham’s friend had steadily managed to derive profit from the sale of his whisky. Therefore, from this idea Graham thought of finding a bottling company that would he would purchase bottles that were shaped like the Edinburgh Rock and hence call it Edinburgh Rock Whisky. Customer research and Product commercialization Market research is doing anything that gives one a better understanding of the market that one is venturing into. Market research is normally done before the production of a commodity and has often been proven a valuable thing to do. It is because a customer research guides one’s business decisions since gives one understanding of his/her competitors, marketing, consumers and products. Since it helps one make better decision, it will certainly come in very handing in creating a successful and exceptional marketing strategy (Marketing Donut, 2015). Marketing helps one reduce the chances of getting the prices, products and promotions wrong. A suitable example is that of Alan Graham. If he had carried out a good market research, he would have known that there were chances that some institutions in Scotland would reject his product. In addition, he would have known that there was need to make a few adjustments to the ignition business plan. Lean start up methodology Lean start up is a scientific approach to that helps in both the management and creation of start-ups. Hence gets the desired products to the consumers in a shorter period. The Lean Start-up technique teaches one how to run a start-up and guides one through every single stage (O'Reilly, 2012). It is quite handy in entrepreneurs who are trying to introduce a new product in to the market. Quite a number of people take months and even years perfecting their products before they can try to sale the products to the consumers. However through the Lean Start-up technique, there are fewer uncertainties since a great deal of the uncertainties have been eliminated. This is because according to the Lean Start-up method, the prospective buyers should be asked hence saving time and elimination of uncertainties (The Lean Startup, 2015). In addition, the Lean Start-up methods calls for the development of a minimum viable product. Which means that a smaller amount of money is spent on trying out something new before and analyzing the consumer’s perception. As for Alan Graham, he did not try out any of the requirements of the Lean Start-up methodology. Would he have tried it, it would have eliminated quite a number of the uncertainties. It would also mean that he has to spend less on his business by manufacturing a few bottles at first that MVPs. Customer development model The main characteristics of the customer development model is the flexible and interactive process, which tends to be similar to that of starting a new enterprise or markets. The customer development model tends to test and validate the key assumptions of a business idea (Ries, 2008). It is through this process, which is systematic that a discovery and learning loop is created. The loop in turn will help one to be able to prioritize their work and have a better ability to time the launch and scale the start-up. Due to the delicate nature of a start-up, the information on who the consumers would be, how they would buy one’s product and which of their problems will be solved by the product are what every entrepreneur wants to know. The four steps of CMD are customer discovery, customer validation, customer creation and company building. For Alan Graham, he did not take all the four steps in the customer development model. The only step that he seemed to have taken is the customer creation step which was achieved by him moving from one organization to another making his brand to be known. If he had taken the other steps, it is very likely that he would have been more successful. Theories of creativity There are five theories of creativity and each one of them has their own view on what causes creativity in individuals. The theories are namely mental illness, addiction, humanistic, psychoticism and psychoanalytical (Writing between the lines, 2011). According to some scholars, each of the theories have their own specific merits. As for the psychoanalytical theory, the main tenet suggests that individuals will be creative because of hash times or even repressed emotions (Drobot, 2014). According to this theory, people tend to retreat from their environment so that they can be creative (Stephen, 2013). For the mental illness theory, the main explanation of this theory is that for creativity to be in existence, there has to be some kind of mental illness. However, the magnitude of mental illness is not proportional to the level of creativity. As for the theory of psychoticism, the tenet is that anyone that is creative has disposition whose tendencies are psychotic. As for the addiction theory, it suggests that addiction to a substance that is either legal or illegal makes one to be creative. Humanistic theory suggests that when the basic human needs have been met, then the sixth need of creativity is what follows. As for Alan Graham, his source of creativity tends to be addiction since his idea was given forth on the table while having a drink and so is his plan B. Opportunity spotting. To be successful at anything one has to be able to tell out an opportunity when he/she sees it. Just to be more precise, one has to be able to see a problem and create an effective solution. There are generally two perspective of seeing things. The first perspective is that of seeing one’s business venture as the possibility of achievement, rewards or advancements the kind of focus that you have is the promotion focus. Moreover, an individual is promotionally focused if she/he thinks of what she/he might gain in case of a success. The second focus is called toe prevention focus. An individual who is seeing what he/she might lose in case of anything possesses the prevention focus. As for Alan Graham, he was promotion focused since he never at one point doubted himself. In addition, he tried out something that had never been tried in his home country and that is being promotion focused (Halvorson, 2013). Team performance. There are various ways of measuring team performance, however, there are two basic ways of measuring team performance. This are at the individual level and at the group level. At the individual level, it entails how well an employee works with other fellow employee this includes how much an individual volunteers in group works, participation and attendance in team meetings and their communication with other members. As a team the progress that is being made can be calibrated by various means. Each will tell how great the team operates, team’s problem solving technique, ease with which the team reaches a consensus and efficiency of the group meetings. The work that has been done by a team can be calibrated through various means, which includes; acceptance, understand ability and use of the final report written by the team, quantity of cases that have been completed and the rate at which people subscribe to the article written by the team. As for Alan Graham, he would have benefited lot if he had put up a team and delegated various responsibilities to various individuals. However, Graham did was the only employee of his company except for individuals who were working on terms of a contract (Carpenter, Bauer and Erdogan, 2015). Types of people and skills. Since Graham had some understanding of the alcohol industry in Scotland, he would have been the C.E.O. of the company he had started. Then he would have looked for a secretary who would have enhanced communication (Skills You Need, 2015). In addition, he would have needed messenger who knew how the alcohol industry worked in Scotland. Strengths and weaknesses. I am a punctual individual therefore, punctuality and execution of objectives would not have been much of an issue. In addition, I tend to take reasonable risks and because of this, I would have insisted on customer research. Also on the issue of bottle manufacturing, I would have preferred to only spend less on a few and invest the remaining money on something of greater value. References Carpenter, M., Bauer, T., and Erdogan, B., 2015. Performance of Individuals and Groups. [Online] Available at: http://catalog.flatworldknowledge.com/bookhub/6?e=fwk-127512-ch01_s05 [Accessed 13 July 2015]. Drobot, A., 2014. The Process of Creativity. [Online] Available at: http://www.freudfile.org/psychoanalysis/papers_9.html [Accessed 13 July 2015]. Halvorson, H. G., 2013. How To Get Better at Spotting Opportunities. [Online] Available at: https://hbr.org/2013/05/how-to-get-better-at-spotting [Accessed 12 July 2015]. Marketing Donut, 2015. Market research. [Online] Available at: http://www.marketingdonut.co.uk/marketing/market-research [Accessed 12 July 2015]. O'Reilly, T., 2012. The Movement That is Transforming How New Products are Built and Launched. [Online] Available at: http://theleanstartup.com/ [Accessed 13 July 2015]. Ries, E., 2008. What is customer development?. [Online] Available at: http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2008/11/what-is-customer-development.html [Accessed 13 July 2015]. Skills You Need, 2015. Improving Communication -Developing Effective Communication Skills.. [Online] Available at: http://www.skillsyouneed.com/ips/improving-communication.html [Accessed 13 July 2015]. Stephen, 2013. The Five Major Theories of Creativity. [Online] Available at: www.ripperdesignandmultimedia.com/.../the-five-major-theories-of-creat... [Accessed 12 March 2015]. The Lean Startup, 2015. The Lean Startup METHODOLOGY. [Online] Available at: http://theleanstartup.com/principles [Accessed 12 July 2015]. Writing between the lines, 2011. The Addiction Theory of Creativity. [Online] Available at: https://whatgrindsdansgears.wordpress.com/tag/the-addiction-theory-of-creativity/ [Accessed 13 July 2015]. Read More