Week 4 Reading Reflection

I was surprised by the multiple kinds of innovation that the text presented. When I think of something "innovative", usually a cool product comes to mind, or maybe something that follows the lines of "building a better mouse trap". It was interesting to see it laid out into the 4 categories of invention, extension, duplication and expansion. I agreed with the author when they said that people put more emphasis on left-brain development than right-brain development. I was confused (and not totally sure I agree) with the author when he argued that people are inherently creative, and some of us choose to stifle that creativity. I think that perhaps our environment causes people to think analytically, but that doesn't necessarily mean we are purposefully negating inherently-creative thoughts. I would ask the author what they think people should do to increase their creativity and why they think society has placed such a focus on left-brain development.

Customer Interviews No. 1

Some of the interviews got cut off a little early due to technical difficulty; I'll have this fixed before the next customer interviews!

In my customer interviews, I decided to explore the opportunity of adding more parking spots on and around campus. In each interview, I tried to gauge how important the interviewee thought the issue was as well as if they would be willing to pay extra money in order to create a solution. I didn't exactly have an interview strategy, but I will say that it was pretty challenging for me to walk up to people and ask to interview/record them. I tried to interview a mix of people who lived on and off campus, both with cars and without, to get a more rounded view of what potential customers think of this opportunity. After interviewing people, I think that most people would agree that there are not enough spots for the number of students attending. Four of the five people interviewed stated that they would be okay with paying a small fee to UF with the promise of building more parking structures. Three of those five people did not live on campus, and one of those people did not have a car. This demonstrates the extent to which students believe there should be more parking on campus.

Top 5 World Problems

Top 5 Problems:

1. Lack of clean, drinkable water in third-world countries.
2. World hunger in third-world countries.
3. Rape on college campuses.
4. The HIV spread.
5. Israel/Palestine feud.

Top 5 Solutions:

1. There should be a higher police presence in and around college campuses at night.
2. There should be more awareness in third-world countries about HIV, AIDS, and how to protect oneself against it.
3.Countries should make more of an effort to provide other countries with clean, drinkable water.
4.Scientists should develop a crop that can be grown in the soils of third-world countries to give them the opportunity to eat, as well as sell the crop to be able to buy other goods.
5. The ambassadors from Israel and Palestine should come together to form some sort of solution.

I selected my number one problem, a lack of clean drinking water, as the worst problem on my list because water is one of the basic elements humans need to survive. Without water to drink, people can become dehydrated, making their bodies slow down and eventually stop working. I believe my top solution is the most implementable because there has already been some police presence shown around various universities, such as UF. We are only a few steps away from the solution, which is increasing the number of patrols and spreading out their location to protect more students.