Putting Theory in to Practise

We've now been in Kenya for over four weeks working with our respective entrepreneurial groups and time seems to be flying by at an alarmingly quick rate. The main aim of the first couple of weeks with our groups was to introduce a few tools designed to help them be creative and innovative with their business and map out every aspect to help minimise risk. Moreover, a huge emphasis has been placed on extensively testing a chosen idea in the market because the best validation for any idea is someone actually paying for it. This highlights the importance of tools such as, the minimum viable product (MVP), where you take your product/service in its most basic form to the market and try to sell it. This allows you to see if demand for your product/service exists and meets any predictions you previously made. This carries much less risk than taking a completed product/service to the market only to potentially see it fail, costing you greatly in time and money.

We've shared these tools with our Kenyan groups because many Kenyan entrepreneurs carry huge amounts of risk and failing can mean they won’t be able to provide for their family or worse. However, I have begun to notice that in many cases the struggle isn't with sharing relevant knowledge, but with facilitating our groups to continue to refer to this knowledge after the initial lesson. Many individuals still regard market research as unnecessary because they “know” their idea will work so they don’t need to ask potential customers, they just think they need an investment to enable the creation of their idea. Sometimes it can be taxing to outline that simply talking to potential customers about what they want may be wiser than telling customers what you think they want. This need for continued support and facilitation highlights the need for plans to be constructed on how we (Balloon Kenya fellows) can potentially provide support for our groups once we return to our home countries.