Assignment: Two loops of innovation
For each of the steps from 2 to 10, please write an answer in not more than 3 lines. Please give a reference to your answer wherever applicable. It should be a secondary source with a link accessible to the reviewer like on a Wikipedia page. It is ok to guess the answer but please mention that it is a guess and also mention whether it is an informed guess. It is ok to mention that no information is available. But makes sure you have done a basic Internet search before your conclusion.
Marks: 10, 1 mark for each of the 9 questions and 1 mark for references.
Late submission penalty: TBD
1. Pick an innovative product or service where technology plays an important role. Let the product/service be such that it got launched in the last 10 years. Please don't choose a company or a technology, choose a product or a service. e.g. Tata Nano is ok, but Tata Motors is not ok OR iPhone is ok, but Apple is not ok, AI/ML/AR-VR/Blockchain is not ok, please choose a specific product/service based on these technologies. Update your choice in this Google sheet. Please choose a unique topic, i.e. don't choose a topic already taken up by another student.
2. Where did the curiosity begin? Give a rough timeline, trigger, incident, or trend that might have caused the curiosity to begin and start the idea-to-demo loop.
3. What was the core technology involved in building the initial prototypes? If more than one technology is involved, pick one of the most important technologies. Was this technology influenced by any major technology trend? If so, which one?
4. At what stage of the technology lifecycle was this technology when it was adopted for initial prototypes? Give a justification for the stage identification.
5. What were the initial prototypes? What was the learning from the initial experiments? Where did the money for the initial prototypes come from?
6. How and when did the idea author(s) validate the idea with potential customers before it was officially launched in the market?
7. When did the idea author(s) get (a) initial investment, (b) mentoring, and (c) initial media publicity? Please mention the investment amount if known, the names of mentors if known and the name of the media (Newspaper, Magazine, YouTube channel, etc.) in each case.
8. When did the product/service reach customers i.e. when was it officially launched in the market? What kind of partnership - say a distribution channel - did it use to reach the customer?
9. How was the Intellectual Property (IP) protected by the innovators?
10. Was there any major failure in this journey? If so, how was it handled by the innovator/team?
