4A- Forming An Opportunity Belief

Kalie Novosedliak

Professor Pryor

ENT3003- Assignment 4A

30 January 2020

1. I believe that there is an opportunity in the scooter parking system on UF campus.
2. The unmet need of this problem is the inadequate scooter parking space spread throughout UF campus in order to accommodate everyone. Students and staff members of UF who own scooters and need to park on campus have this unmet need. I believe this need has evolved over time with the rapid increase of students and faculty present on campus, so this need is relatively new and has not always existed. In order to meet this need, students and staff have to either wait for someone to leave in order to take their spot, find a way to squeeze their scooter in small spaces if possible, or if they do not have enough time(in order to make it to class or work on time) to find proper scooter parking, they often times park their scooter against UF parking regulations and get a ticket. 
3. (A)Student-Athlete at UF
4. (A)The first prototypical customer is interviewed is one of my teammates, Celi Guzman. She said the exact nature of the need is to park her scooter closest to wherever she has class, by the pool, or by Hawkins Academic Advising Center for student-athletes. She continuously stressed how difficult it is to find immediate parking at these specific places, especially during the week and school hours simply due to the lack of enough space provided for scooter parking. Celi also believes she is most aware of this unmet need during the week days when she is on campus because it is the most crowded with students all trying to park in one limited spot in order to go anywhere on campus. Because her class times range from 9:35a.m.-5p.m., Celi is on campus for most of the day and has noticed scooter parking is hardest to find in the morning until 1-2p.m., but parking is much more available towards the evening. She told me she has only had this need for a semester and a half solely because that is exactly how long she has owned a scooter for. Celi also said she immediately noticed this unmet need at the beginning of the Fall 2019 semester, directly correlating to when she initially got a scooter. She currently addresses this need by making sure she gives herself enough time before class to find scooter parking, expecting that she will have to wait for someone to leave in order to take their spot. Celi is not at all satisfied with this solution and believes that a true solution to fix this unmet need and problem would be to create more scooter parking throughout campus. 

3. (B) UF Swim and Dive Athletic Trainer

4.(B)Jon is an athletic trainer that works here at UF and drives a scooter. He mostly parks at the pool, and by the stadium in order to help his athletes. Jon also stressed to me the unmet need of not enough scooter parking on campus and how it affects his schedule throughout the day. Jon says he experiences this need all day, every day of the week that he works on campus. The places where he needs to park are always crowded because the scooter parking for these specific destinations are especially limited and usually taken up by athletes’ scooters. Like Celi, Jon also experienced this unmet need immediately after getting a scooter, on the first time trying to park it on campus. Currently, in order to satisfy this unmet need, Jon often walks between the SEZ Athletic Training room and the training room in the O’connell Center Training Room rather that driving this scooter back and forth, knowing how hard it will be to find parking at each of these places. Jon is unsatisfied with this unmet need because it is a lot more time consuming and physically taxing having to walk back and forth between both training rooms. Jon thinks it is a great idea to encourage UF to create additional scooter parking on campus. 

3.(C) Student at UF and in Kappa Delta Sorority

4.(C) Emily McFarlane is a student at UF and also a member of the Kappa Delta Sorority. I chose to interview Emily about the unmet need of scooter parking around campus because she has very different destinations to park at throughout her day in comparison to Celi and Jon. However, likewise to Celi and Jon, Emily also experiences problems with the lack of scooter parking around campus and even at her sorority on campus. She finds this unmet need is always present, even during the evening when her sorority gets together for dinners and meetings. Emily said she has had this problem all two year that she’s had a scooter and attended UF. She first became aware of this need the first time she needed to park her scooter at her first class freshman year because there was no scooter parking available at that time. Emily currently addresses this problem by taking the bus around campus rather than having to drive and re-park her scooter and different locations. She is not satisfied with this solution because her schedule does not often times match up with the bus schedule, making it inconvenient and less time efficient for her everyday tasks. 

5. (A,B, and C) I learned that this opportunity is very important to the majority of students and staff here on campus. This unmet need is a problem for most of those who have a scooter and need to park them on campus on a regular day to day basis. I was surprised to hear the different ways people address this unmet need and how drastically it affects their schedule throughout the day. For Celi, as a student-athlete she has very limited spare time to begin with, so hearing that she has to dedicate extra time solely in order to find scooter parking for where she needs to go is really inconvenient for her and the limited free-time she has to begin with between school and swim. For Jon, I am especially surprised that there isn't a dedicated scooter parking for staff member to make it easier for them to commute throughout campus if needed. This seems like something that would dramatically increase the amount of time he is able to spend helping athletes rather than spending time having to walk back and forth between training rooms. And lastly, from Emily’s interview I was really surprised that her alternative way of transportation is the bus. Many times students buy a scooter to prevent from having to use the bus and being able to come and go to different places whenever you want to, but understanding that Emily still has to use the bus even after buying a scooter only because it is so difficult to find scooter parking is very unreasonable. 

7. The whole of my original opportunity is still there and perhaps enhanced. After interviewing three different prototypical customers, my new opportunity is more accurate and encourages me to believe this unmet need is at a much larger scale and affects most people on campus. I believe entrepreneurs should most definitely adapt their opportunities based on the customers’ feedback because the solution is to help those specific customers. Staying firm and creating a solution that doesn’t completely solve the problem customers are facing would be a waste of time and effort. I believe making the customers’ feedback when trying to create a solution to an unmet need should be a priority to an entrepreneur.