Seahorse Power Company (SPC)
Case Study: Jim Poss
Problem identification
- Introduction
The ability to locate, recognize or visualize a market gap and acting fast to meet it constitutes the very fundamental essence of a successful entrepreneur (Kuratko, 2016). While sparsely perusing the National Geographic, Jim is saddened by a phrase that reads “Without oil, the world will be a very different place”. It is this proposition that informed Jim Poss urge to offer alternative solutions to the rhetoric that have dominated the globe for decades with regard to the use of oil as the only economic driver through his company: Seahorse Power Company(SPC). Jim Poss observes that world economies can still realize development by employing environmental friendly power generation methods. Through SWOT analysis, this report will seek to prove these propositions by analyzing the observations of Jim Poss through his childhood, student, and career life.
Jim Poss has been portrayed as a very resilient, goal oriented and ambitious young man with a passion to successfully exploit his objectives. His entrepreneurial culture can be traced from his self-initiative culture to exploit his abilities and interest that was greatly inspired by his childhood as well as teenage interests. Taking a course in environmental studies would later shape his skills, knowledge, and know-how towards an entrepreneurial dispensation of his interests. His abilities to foster partnerships with people of similar interest and skills he would need to build his empire such as venture capitalist and engineers couple up to thrive his entrepreneurial stance (Bull & Willard, 1993). This was basically his abilities to negotiate, write business plans, conduct research before engaging, having efficient interpersonal relations as well as public relations skills.
The path towards Jim’s goal is not smooth at all. As Jim wants to create an environmental-friendly product as he has awakened and wants to help the environment after he concerned about the world oil is declining. This inspired him to create the product. He participated in many business competitions to gain experiences and trying to present about his product’s business plans, but it’s was failed. Jim knew that it would be impossible for him to make the product by himself, he would need a financial support. Jim thinks that in order to attract the investors to invest in his product, his business should be profitable enough because the investors would be interest in receiving benefits for lending money.
Finally, he came out with an solar-powered trash compaction with useful software to makes the customer’s life much easier. With 24/7 remote monitored software that makes customer be able to eliminate the bins’ overflow and to manage their garbage without paying the big amount of money as before. The big belly came out with high capacity and automatically trash compact function when the bin is full.
- Address of issues
SPC has faced a number of difficulties that they have to overcome those problem in order to keep their business alive. These problems include both external and internal problems. For external problems, Jim has faced the financial problems such as he hasn’t have enough money to conduct and make his dreamed product and he couldn’t get the investors to invest in his business
SPC are also facing some issues within their own business such as even though his team are having an engineering background, but none of them have done anything like the solar-powered compactors before, so this is very new and challenging for them. In addition, they were not being advance enough to use technologies to develop their own product, as they drew the product by themselves instead of using the technology.
SWOT Analysis
Strengths
Jim’s company, Seahorse Power Company(SPC) sort to solve the energy requirements by innovating products that have the ability to utilize environmental friendly power generation methods that would offer consumers cheaper and more efficient power alternatives than most 20th century technologies. His company though still a startup, was especially inspired by his childhood interests that prompted Jim Poss to take an environmental course while at the university. This childhood motivation and the shaping of his skills and knowledge at the university and work experience in different companies inform the strengths he would letter use to impact his business with. Moreover, his SPC team has related education background education with the product, so this makes them be able to successfully complete the model of the product in a short amount of time.
Weaknesses
Jim’s ambitions in the development of prototypes that would utilize environmental friendly energy were adversely faced by heavy capital requirements and in-depth industry experience. Jim was specializing in environmental studies and as such had no even an iota of engineering experience that the industry he was determined to engage in required. He would be forced to sell his ideas for funding by the venture capitalist as well as tap the industry experience from engineers. Also, because the market for the solar-powered trash compactors is still small, it’s hard to find investors to invest in his product.
Opportunities
However, Jim sort to join hands with people of similar interest who had advanced engineering experience and an entrepreneurship stance to assist him whenever he encountered an engineering huddle. Moreover, Jim Poss decided to take advantage of the venture capitalist that was visualizing investing in wind power as the way to go. Jim also used his abilities to research, write business plans and proposals to source for funding to finance his projects. Moreover, Jim had the opportunity to patent his inventions from being replicated. Lastly, the cost of a traditional trash receptacle is much more expensive than the product it selves including the delivered price of $5,000 (see Exhibit 3.3).
Threats
Jim’s company greatest threats were in convincing clients that his prototypes were better off than what they have traditionally been employing for a long time such as that a solar compactor could offer significant savings than what a trash collection device could. Moreover, seasoned industry players such as dumpster and compaction equipment manufactures would advance Jim’s company stiff competition especially in the teething stage. He could only peg his success in producing a prototype outstanding enough to drive industry players to urge to replicate. In addition, the company are facing the rising production cost due to the price of materials. Even though the customer invest in the product, the is no after-sale service for this product, this makes the customer feels unsecure and not sure of the product itself.
Figure 1: SWOT analysis of a seahorse Power Company
| Strength Opportunities | Strength Threats |
| · Potential customers who could not dump their garbage in the normal way due to high cost. · Find investors who sees potential in the product and its ability. · Ask past customer to give a review on the product and use it to products · Develop the product that competitors could not easily copy.
| · Try to have a name in the market by participating in exhibition · Make the lease option into reality
|
| Weakness Opportunities | Weakness Threats |
| · Find individuals or companies who have interest in environmental-friendly product to invest. · Earn more capitals through participating in environmental conferences. | · Show potential investors and costumers that their investment will have a beneficial result. · Keep developing the product to prevent other businesses from copying. · Expand product range. |
Business Model Canvas
| Key partners
-Facilities management
-Investors
-Government | Key activities Remote monitored solar powered trash compactor
| Value proposition -Lower cost of waste management -Being able to identify extra resources that could come back to the business. -Eliminate overflowing bins -High capacity and automatically compact the trash when the bin is full. -Multi-stream options available to create customized combination stations. | Customer relationship -Services are conducted automatically through software. | Customer segment
-Niche market of customers who struggle with cost of garbage pickup.
-Customer with a high interest in green energy and the solar power. | |
| Key resource Software Patents Machines Skillful engineers Big belly Solar compactors | Channels
-Exhibition -connection -Big belly solar website | ||||
| Cost Structure Materials Labor Research and development | Revenue streams Direct sale Leasing | ||||
The business model canvas for SPC company. Customer segment part, SPC is focusing on the niche market of customers who is struggling with garbage pickup and as his concept for the business, environmental-friendly product, so there might be a group of people who is looking for this product to save the world and to decrese the amount of fossil fuels.
For value proposition, by having this product, the customer will be able to lower the cost if waste management. Although we include the product delivery price, it is still much cheaper than the cost of a traditional trash receptacle. Moreover, the product’s software makes life much easier than before, with high capacity trash that comes with a software that helps you to eliminate the bin’s overflow and automatically compact the trash when it’s full without using fossil fuel but solar power instead. The company using exhibition, their connections and its website to reach their customer. The services are conducted automatically through software so this means the company doesn’t directly service their customer by themselves but they built the software instead so they satisfy their customer by their product. The company can get money by direct selling and by leasing their product.
The key resources of the product are their software and machine but by only this it is not enough for the product to become a big belly’s trash compactor; it needs skillful engineer in order to make it happen. The key activities of this product is basically monitored solar powered trash compactor so this make you be able to track and eliminate the bin’s overflow and compact it when the bin is full. Moreover, the product needs key partner to optimize their business models, reduce risk, and acquire resources, the company’s partnership would be facilities management to manage the company facilities, investors as the company not have enough money from the start to make the product into the market, so the company needs investors to invest in their business. However, the company is not trustworthy and well-known by the market enough to invest so it’s a hard time for the SPC team to make the product. Lastly, The cost structure, Big belly has to pay for the cost of the material to produce the product, labor costs such as engineering and for research and development for the company to improve and develop their product.
References
Bull, I., & Willard, G. E. (1993). Towards a theory of entrepreneurship. Journal of business
venturing, 8(3), 183-195.
Kuratko, D. F. (2016). Entrepreneurship: Theory, process, and practice. Cengage Learning.