BA 290A-2 and ME290PFall 1998
BA 290A-2 and ME290P
Fall 1998
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2. The Urban Barbeque
David Eagleson, 2nd Year MBA
415.567.5796
The need: Having lived in multi-unit apartment complexes within major urban areas for the last 4 years, I have been deprived of one of the great loves of my life - grilling food over an open flame. The modern apartment unit usually lacks outdoor space suitable for use of a conventional barbecue. A few buildings do have common areas for this purpose, but this raises concerns about whether other residents will respect property
left in common areas. Barbecued meals require little or no preparation, and have a unique flavor derived from the use of an open flame and/or coals.
Competition: Conventional coal or gas grills would be the benchmark product, but none are available that fit the need of the apartment dweller. Stovetop grills may be installed in ovens, but require the sacrifice of 2 burners. Stovetops also are difficult to clean and maintain, and lack the full flavor of open-flame grilling.
Target Market: Urban population living in multi-dwelling structures. The product could possibly be introduced with a "yuppie" target, focusing on young, high income individuals and sold through luxury channels such as "The Sharper Image".
3. Universal Plug
Name: Yi Zhang
Dept: EECS (cory 341)
Phone: 643-5895
Email: yizhang@wind.eecs.berkeley.edu
Idea: When we move to a new house, the electric stuff must be reconnected. The outlets on the wall may have two or three terminals, while all the plugs, extensions may have many combinations depending on the number of terminals at the input and output. That probably forces us to buy lots of adapters or different types of extensions etc. whenever there is some change in the room. Many layers of connectors may also make it impossible to push our furniture all the way to the wall.
A Possible Solution: I am proposing to make the third terminal on the plug to be removable. An easy way would be to screw it on and off. Then there would be no need for any adapters, and when you buy an extension, you can be sure it can be used everywhere. If we can solve the problems like contact resistance, I think it has a good chance to be marketable.
4. Internet Fax (for dumb, old fax machines)
Name: Da-shan Shiu, EECS
Tel: 510 642 6061
e-mail: dsshiu@eecs.berkeley.edu
Market opportunity: Currently, there is a service that allows fax-modem users to send Internet fax through a local ISP. But if you don't fax from a computer, you are out of luck.
Our service allows people to use a '70s fax machine, without the help of a PC, to send long distance faxes at a cost essentially equal to that of a local call. Better yet, the customer can choose to fax to a Fax machine or to an e-mail account.
Needless to say, this is one money saving service for every plain fax machine user. The market should include all consumers, corporations, and governments.
5. Watersports Lifevest
John G. Millar, MBA `99
(415) 346-9328
email: millar@haas.berkeley.edu
A lightweight, fashionable, inflatable life vest for use in ocean-based watersports. Windsurfing and Sea-Kayaking are two typical ocean-based activities where a standard life vest can become more of a hindrance than a safety feature. In each of these sports, mobility and light weight are essential. This product would usually be worn un-inflated but could be inflated in an emergency through the use of standard (in the bicycle industry anyway) CO2 cartridges. Because the cartridges are readily available, the vest could be de-flated after use and new cartridges could be easily installed.
6. Casual prescription sunglasses
Keita Mori, MBA '99
email: mori@haas.berkeley.edu
Target customers: People with bad sight, but not willing to use contact lenses.
I personally don't use contact lens, because they don't fit me well. I get frustrated when I travel to ski resorts and see many nice sunglasses in stores, because they are not prescription.
My idea is to produce low-priced casual prescription sunglasses to serve people like myself. Products can vary from ski sunglasses, swimming goggles to casual/sport sunglasses and souvenir sunglasses.
7. Customer Reference Engine
Proposed by: Andy Han
Affiliation: Haas MBA 99
Phone: (510) 524-1796
e-mail: ahan@haas.berkeley.edu
Market Opportunity
The success of a new enterprise software and hardware vendor is dependent on their the ability to win early customers, make them successful and leverage these wins into more sales. As described in the famous high-tech marketing book, Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore creating successful, "referenceable" customers is the key to growth and eventual market acceptance. Recently, we have seen increased use of "customer success" advertising from large enterprise vendors. Examples include Netscape's recent Ford Motor Company ads and the very successful IBM e-business ad campaign.
Creating, maintaining and leveraging existing customers to create new sales is a great challenge and few companies do it well. Reference customers are used heavily in several ways:
The process of getting customer references is very complex, political and time consuming. Often, the process is recreated for each reference instance. Accountability for maintaining data on customer referencibility is not assigned to any part of the organization, and the only fraction of the information on customer happiness exists in each of the heads of the salesperson, product manager, customer service person and profession services person involved with a given customer.
Several companies address pieces of this problem, but no one that I know of is addressing the maintenance of customer reference status and materials directly. Sales and marketing vendors like Siebel maintain customer data, but do not take the next step to leverage existing customers to create new ones. In the company I interned with this summer, they were beginning to build a system to address this need, but everyone involved was skeptical of the design proposed.
The target market would be for small to medium-sized companies in the enterprise software and hardware category.
Project Scope
This project would be to design a process and software architecture for creating and maintaining customer reference data, defining the scope of a complete product. The prototype would include a single module of the software product.
8. Hands-Off Cellular
Chris Pfaff ,Mechanical Engineering
845-3813
email: pfaff@euler.berkeley.edu
Hands-Off Cellular is an attempt to allow cellular phone users to talk without having to hold their phones next to their ears. This product would likely be especially useful for people who like to make calls while their driving for example. It would allow them to operate their phones almost hands-free. The target market in this case is the rather large pool of cellular phone users who make a considerable volume of their calls while driving. This group might include those who commute long distances to work or conduct a large portion of their business on the road, such as a salesman or real-estate agent. Many dedicated car phones already have this capability, however, most users prefer the freedom of a hand-held mobile phone and thus do not enjoy hands-free operation.
9. Alpine Application of Motorola Smart Radio
John Hewson, ME
email: jhewson@dornfeld
I would like to propose a topic to be developed by a team for Me221 and Me290p. The product would be based upon a Motorola smart radio and would be updated for alpine applications. This would require ergonomic studies, market evaluation, and some basic circuitry additions.
I would like to clarify my proposal after reading the other radio proposal.
I feel that since the project is constrained to using the electronics in a current Motorola Talkabout, adapting the product to meet the needs of an interested, specific market is a logical method of developing a new project.
With my experience in manufacturing (rapid prototyping will be a focus of the 221 project) and snowboarding, I feel that an alpine specific product should be developed rather than adapting the talkabout to satisfy several different markets.
I have also spoke with Sangkee Min, a mechanical engineer, who is on the wait list for 290p. He is going to work with me on this product for 221 even if he cannot get on the class list for 290p. Between the two of us, manufacturing and mechanical design is well covered. The further development of this product would require business students who are suited to specify production schedules, investigate costs, conduct market analysis, and aid in marketing as well as develop the product (of course!).
10. Two-Wheel Drive Bicycle
Erick Davidson, ME
email: edavidso@euler.berkeley.edu
I wanted to present in class tomorrow a two-wheel drive bicycle project. These have been built in the past but all have had major drawbacks so they weren't very successful. A two-wheel drive bicycle would probably be popular with mountain bike racers, and steet racers due to the small small in efficieny they would get. Tricksters might also like a 2WD bicycle because it would open the door to more tricks.
11. Foldable Bicycle Handlebars
Nikhil Krishnan
643-6512
email: lkrishnan@greenmfg.me.berkeley.edu
Dept. of Mechanical Engineering
Sara Thurwachter
643-6512
email: sara@greenmfg.me.berkeley.edu
Dept. of Mechanical Engineering
Our primary market is bicycle commuters and bike riders who do not have large storage spaces at home. The handlebars on a bicycle are the largest constraint to fitting it into small spaces, so reducing the width of the bike will allow it to fit in crowded bike racks, behind doors at home/work, public transport (BART), etc. We have found no competing products apart from a completely foldable bike. The foldable bike has a completely different design than typical road or mountain bikes, so the handlebar solution proposed in the foldable bike is not compatible with regular bikes. We believe the market size could be substantial in the Bay Area, and the pricing system in bike accessory market should allow significant profit margins. The bicycle accessory market also has low barriers to entry with many small companies introducing innovative products frequently. From our brief preliminary market interest poll (green lab commuters), the foldable handlebars appear to have good market potential.
12. Snowboard Accessories
Rebeccah Anderson
642-0853
email: randerso@radke.cchem.berkeley.edu
chemical engineering
a. Snowboard-Snowshoe compatible shoes Right now the trend in snowboarding is to move away from traditional slopes and more to backcountry. However, to do this, a boarder needs two sets of boots, one for the board and one for the snowshoes. A combination involving the two of them, thereby only having one pair of boots, would make climbing much easier. I estimate there to be about 100,000-200,000 potential users of this and more in the future. Ski areas are becoming increasingly crowded and more and more extreme boarders are looking for less crowded places to board.
b. New bindings for boards. Although within the last two years there has been a jump in new bindings
for snowboards, they still require all but the most talented user to sit down to either do or undo the bindings. I estimate there to be about 1 million snowboarders in the US alone and, as with most sports, everyone wants the best and newest equipment.
13. A Toy
Ted Hartnell, MBA
email: hartnell@haas.berkeley.edu
2740 College Ave., Apartment 306
Berkeley, CA 94705, USA
(ph) 510-848-7090
(fax) 510-642-4769
I couldn't get into your New Product Development class this semester but I have a great idea for a product that needs to be developed. If some of your students want to develop it I would be more than happy to pass on all my thoughts. It is, in essence, a toy for ages 10+. You make it by combining two other toys and it is actually very simple.
14. Low-cost, wireless computing product for K-12 education
Sherry Hsi, PhD
Post-doc Researcher
email: sherry@concord.org
My virtual office: http://cilt.org
Description of Project:
Design of an innovative, low-cost wireless product for learning
A myriad of wireless communication and portable computing technologies are being developed for business and research purposes, but are suboptimal for uses in education because of their price, performance, size, and other features. There are potentially many promising alternatives based on
inexpensive hand-held computers, sensors, network computers, wireless networking, and interoperable software components or "ubiquitous computing" technologies. Computer-based learning applications that support dialogue, collaboration, sharing of visual reprensentations, and real-time data display have shown learning gains, especially in math and science education. Moreover, the migration of learning outside the constraints of a school or classroom provides more opportunities for carrying out personal and joint investigations between students and teachers to support deeper inquiry, authentic observations, experimentation, and reflection. Learning mediated by low-cost portable products can enable learning to happen any place and any time.
What design and configuration of a low-cost portable computing product will help motivate students and teachers to learn and improve their understanding of a topic? What are some "learner-centered design"
methodologies? The goal of this design project is to generate designs that make use of ubiquitous computing technologies that are low-cost and possess features that address the needs of K-12 learners.
15. New Product Development Project Proposal: Nutrabase.com Drew Parker email: aparker@haas.berkeley.edu
Nutrabase.com is being developed as part of a project for BA295A (Entrepreneurship). There is also potential for tie-ins to Marketing Research class (BA 261). The originator of the idea is W.B. Peale, MBA `99. W.B. worked previously as a researcher at a large consulting firm, and worked this summer at an Internet Market Research firm. Drew Parker, also MBA `99, worked as a software engineer, consultant, and project manager in Silicon Valley and San Francisco's Multimedia gulch. He is a founder of Envizit Corp. (creator of GlobalRent.com) and works part time as a consultant for Organic Online, a large San Franisco web site developer (clients include McDonald's and Starbucks).
A description of the project (as presented to BA295A) is below. Skills needed for the project include people with any or all of the following expertise:
This is a consumer-oriented Web site
focusing on nutrition. The site will be built upon an extensive database of nutritional content information for thousands of food products available in supermarkets and restaurants. The database will draw upon existing USDA databases, product labels and nutritional studies. With the database as its foundation, the site will offer visitors four major services:
Possible Revenue streams:
Web Auctions are a growing form of e-commerce enabled by the proliferation of web technology.
While hundreds of auction sites exist on the web, selling anything from computers to lab equipment to beanie babies, there are few consumer-oriented information sites on the web regarding these auctions.
The big auction houses often know exactly what an item put up for auction will sell for based on historical data, while consumers, enthralled with the "game" aspect of auctions, may overpay for merchandise.
I propose development of an auction portal site that consolidates information from dozens of ongoing auction sites, and provides consumers with access to the information and related services.
Possible revenue models include advertising and sales of auction pricing data.
I'm looking for people interested in e-commerce, marketing research, database, data analysis, interface design.
20. A car repair web site - with 3 dimensional models of parts, engines, etc.
James F Cook
510-652-4580
A car repair web site - with 3 dimensional models of parts, engines, etc. with some "artifical intelligence" component to help diagnose problems, based by a large database of problems, solutions, parts, advice.
21. Handfree operating cell phone
James F Cook
510-652-4580
Handfree operating cell phone - keypad the size and fit of a pager, with a earpiece
27. Web Auction Portal
Drew Parker
Web Auctions are a growing form of e-commerce enabled by the proliferation of web technology.
While hundreds of auction sites exist on the web, selling anything from computers to lab equipment to beanie babies, there are few consumer-oriented information sites on the web regarding these auctions.
The big auction houses often know exactly what an item put up for auction will sell for based on historical data, while consumers, enthralled with the "game" aspect of auctions, may overpay for merchandise.
I propose development of an auction portal site that consolidates information from dozens of ongoing auction sites, and provides consumers with access to the information and related services.
Possible revenue models include advertising and sales of auction pricing data.
I'm looking for people interested in e-commerce, marketing research, database, data analysis, interface design.
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Last updated: 5 September 1998