Idea Napkin No. 1

1) You. Who you are. What your talents are. What your skills and experiences are. Also: what are your aspirations? Specifically regarding your business concept, how do you see this business (if you were to start it) playing a role in your life?

• I am a second year Business Administration major at the University of Florida. Before enrolling in the BA program at UF, I completed my Associates of Arts degree at UCF. I have personal experience with both of these university's parking situations due to having attended both. My talents include being an effective communicator, adaptable learner, and collaborator. My goal for this company is to modernize parking infrastructure across college campuses throughout the state of Florida. I would eventually want my company to be acquired.

2) What are you offering to customers? Describe the product or service (in other words, how you'll solve customers' unmet needs).

• I would be offering customers ample and convenient parking. The product is comprised of two separate but linked components. Physical parking structures will be built and or renovated with smart technology. The structure itself provides access to more available and accessible parking. The smart technology will track available and unavailable parking spots throughout the campus garages which customers will be able to see updated simultaneously on their smartphones. 

3) Who are you offering it to? Describe, in as much detail as possible, the demographic and psycho-graphic characteristics of your customers. Think especially of this question: what do your customers all have in common?

• I am offering the parking structures to university's across Florida. The app will be available to anybody who can utilize it to aid in their transportation need. All of my customers have the same thing in common, they all have the same problem. I will bring attention to the issue by getting in contact with heads of each university's student government association. This allows me to present the problem to those who share it with me. SGA possesses a yearly budget which would aid in the getting the university to buy the parking structures. 

4) Why do they care? Your solution is only valuable insofar as customers believe its valuable to them. Here, explain why customers will actually pay you money to use your product or service. 

• The direct customers for this product are university's which do not have efficient or effective parking infrastructure to accommodate the exponentially growing population of students enrolling in Florida university's. These university's care because they would be investing in the improvement of student, staff, and campus visitors experience. With the expansion of parking infrastructure, campus's across the state will operate more efficiently and effectively. For example, UCF's football stadium accommodates 46,000 people, their parking garages are comprised of 8,597 parking spaces. These parking garages are not exclusively held for sporting events meaning there is not 8,597 available spots for football spectators to park. With the expansion of infrastructure and the ability to track availability on a smartphone will allow large events to operate with reduced traffic due to the campus visitors knowing when the parking spaces are full. 

5) What are your core competencies? What sets you apart from everyone else? Also: what do you have that nobody else has? 

•  Work in progress. I currently do not have any legal protection over my proposed solution. 

Reflection 

I believe the idea at its core is a very good one. This idea would benefit both university's with reduced traffic and user satisfaction, while the users would benefit from having the information available to them to make an informed decision on their commute to, from, and around campus. I am concerned with the feasibility of the solution I have created so far. One weakest points is determining how I will effectively sell this product to the customer, this will be challenging due to the customer being university's and the majority of users are just beneficiaries. My other weakest point is figuring out how I can get legal protection of my solution to protect competitors from copying my technology.