Opportunity
As a student and a season-ticket holder for football games, the unmet need I identified was the Gator Student Ticketing Office lacking the software to track and reprint lost or stolen tickets for students that purchase tickets through them. I was one of these many students that were unfortunate to lose one of their tickets before a game early in the season. However, the primary target of this opportunity is the ticketing office because they are the people I will be presenting the solution to solve the unmet need for my secondary consumer, University of Florida students that purchase football tickets through the ticketing office. Currently, the only way to 'satisfy' the need is for students to either not attend the games after losing a ticket or purchase another one from the ticketing office or another student which can be costly in the end. The size of this opportunity can keep growing past what the initial target is as other ticketing offices at other universities around the country can implement this system into their ticketing software that will allow students to have their tickets reprinted if they are lost or stolen. I believe when it comes to the "window of opportunity" for the venture concept can stay open for as long as the ticketing office doesn't implement a system to track tickets and have them reprinted if they are lost or stolen by students on campus. However, I believe that jumping through that window sooner than later because they could be working with someone or developing the feature in-house to solve the issue that has been affecting them for a long time now.
The changes of the environment when it comes to solving this unmet need would be changing the process of how the ticketing office hands out the tickets when students come to pick them up during the week leading up to the game. The process will involve them scanning the tickets into the system after they have swiped your ID card to check for tickets. Those tickets are attached to your account after they scan them. Now, the tickets are 'attached' to your student ID card and if you were to lose your tickets before the game, you could go to the ticketing office, hand them your ID card and they will reprint the tickets off for you. This will remove the issue of students having to buy new tickets form the office or another student on campus that is no longer attending the game.
Innovation
The software that I am introducing isn't innovating to ticketed events as a lot of places that have a ticketing system also including a way for the tickets to be tracked and reprinted if they are every lost or stolen. I understand this because I work at a performing arts box office and we have a system for customers to contact us and have their tickets reprinted for whatever reason like if they lost them or the mail failed to deliver them or anything else. The plan for this opportunity is to work with a team on developing a software feature that can be implemented in the Gator Student Ticketing Office software that can attach football tickets to students ID's and be able to reprint those tickets if they are ever lost or stolen by the students at the University of Florida.
Venture Concept
The innovation that I am proposing will be solving the issue of the Gator Student Ticketing Office having to deal with students that have purchased football tickets through them and having lost them after picking them up. As of right now, the ticketing office doesn't have a proper solution to the issue besides telling the students to either find the lost ticket, buy a new one from them, or buy an unclaimed or claimed ticket from another student on campus. Not only that, but we plan to provide the service to all sporting events offered at the University of Florida. While the ticketing office will serve as the primary target audience of this innovation, the students that purchase tickets are the secondary target audience because they will benefit from the innovation that I am offering as they will no longer have to worry about buying another ticket if they were to lose their previous one before a game. They will be able to go to the ticketing office and have them reprint the ticket they lost as it is connected to their UF ID card. I believe the ticketing office would be quick to adopt this feature as it will help improve that customer relationship they have with the students and provide a 'safety net' for them if they were ever to lose their tickets in the future. At first, it could be difficult to train employees on the process, but it will become second-nature to them during the deployment process. As for competitors, their current software provider could be working on developing this feature for them to implement in the future, but also other teams that might be looking into pitching this software feature to them to implement. I would organize the 'business' as a small to work on the initial development of the project, but as it grows and time goes on, an expansion will be important for us to be able to provide sufficient support for the project.
Three Minor Elements
For the first element, I believe the most important resource to follow during the development process is to stay simple and continue working diligently despite running into speedbumps during the development process of the opportunity.
For the second element, I believe the next opportunity in line for the innovation is to start expanding the software feature to other ticketing offices around the state of Florida to continuously grow and develop the software to be as efficient as possible. We would then look into expanding nationwide to different colleges and universities around the country.
For the third element, I would like to see the software implemented at the majority of all major universities around the country and into multiple sporting programs like softball, basketball, and soccer. I think it is important to continuously expand the scope of the business to remain successful in the long run.
Feedback
Regarding the feedback I got from my first venture concept, neither of the two students had any negative feedback or concerns regarding it. They were both pretty supportive of the venture concept and were interested in how it would progress after this class is over with. However, I went back to my "What's Next?" post and read over it again for any changes that I could make to the concept. One of the people that I interviewed in the post stated that we should look into expanding it to other sporting events at the University of Florida because they mentioned they have lost a ticket for one of the basketball games. Since he already claimed a ticket under his ID, he wasn't able to claim another and had to look on the Facebook page for an unclaimed ticket.
The Changes
The changes I made from the feedback were minimal, but I altered the service from just being provided to the Gator Student Ticketing Office for football to being provided to all of the sporting events that are offered here at the University of Florida. There might be other changes that I could make to the venture concept, but I don't want to make any unnecessary changes that I might not need if the venture concept is good the way it is.
