At the end of the 1st semester of the TI:GER program, my team had assembled a detailed Industry Analysis of the Solar industry. This report addressed the competitive forces, the major players, and the diverse markets of the industry.
Now comes the challenge of our second semester- picking the best of these markets to target for our business model canvas. The business model canvas (http://www.businessmodelgeneration.com/canvas) will provide a framework for our go-to market strategy this semester. This requires two steps: identify and understand potential customers for our solar cell and discover how to best reach them.
Rule No.1 of customer development is that you must get outside your building to find any worthwhile facts. For us, this means that we need to do detailed interviews with at least 10 potential customers to fully understand what the market needs and how customers would be most apt to address their pain. This is not a sales pitch, but a great opportunity to have a dialogue with potential customers (and industry experts) to gain insight into what the market views as important.
Today we had our first interview and already we're finding out about new opportunities and customer needs that we had never thought of in our group.
I'm looking forward to this process and this semester, I'll keep you posted!
