After a week of tennis balls, Gangnam Style, reflections and all the group activities that the Squared programme could throw at us, we got down to Project One last week with the new-found colleagues we had gotten to know in Week 1.
Our task was to create a new online business. And our idea had to be innovative, inspirational, and original. We would have four days to research and prepare our ground-breaking business concept before pitching on Thursday to a panel of industry and digital experts. So, no pressure. We’ll talk more about each of our teams, but first we want to explain the process behind developing our ideas. Unfortunately we can’t let on too much about the ideas themselves, but hopefully it will give you a taste of how Squared works.
The first thing we did as teams was draw up a series of guidelines. These guidelines acted as a road map for the week ahead and identified the kind of teams—and the kind of team members—we wanted to be. The guidelines covered everything from clear deadlines to what we should do in the event of a nuclear disagreement meltdown (thankfully we didn’t have to refer back to this point too much). We found the culture of openness and feedback that had been instilled in Week 1 was absolutely crucial to working well together.
Next up was research. At first, this all felt a little bit daunting. If the universe is infinite then the internet can’t be far behind, and for a while it seemed as though every idea we had was already out there, and done in a much more sophisticated way than we could imagine. But then slowly we began to spot opportunities in the digital landscape: ideas we could improve on, ideas that hadn’t been done, or ideas that weren’t really delivering what consumers wanted. We researched how we could stand out in the marketplace, get consumers on board and get our revenue models working.
Sam:
In Week One, I think we were all still unsure of presenting in front of the rest of our groups, but by the end of Week 2 it felt like the most natural thing in the world. My team had fifteen minutes to outline the opportunity we had spotted, identify our target audience and building a user case. The most important thing was to visualize our idea for the audience—and then sell it as well as we could. Afterwards, the members of the panel, including some of London’s most creative digital minds, grilled us on our presentations. It was a great opportunity to be asked such articulate, incisive questions on something we had worked on all week, and I came away from the presentation buzzing with ideas of how to take my team’s idea further.
My other highlight of the week was the talk from Patrick Pichette, Chief Finance Officer of Google, and undoubtedly an incredibly busy man. He spoke to us for half an hour, and while that might not seem a long time, he managed to convey in that short period the incredible scope of opportunity the digital landscape provides us.
Seth:
It was all systems go this week as we were thrown into our first project. For me, the challenges were twofold. Of course, we had to interrogate our creativity with commercial thinking and build strong revenue models for our business ideas that we could defend in front of a panel. But we also had to structure our own free time, allocate roles to different members of the team, and align on the “how” as well as the “what”. While we all had very different ways of approaching the problems we came up against, we found that being adaptable and inviting constant feedback from our colleagues was the best way to maximize our efficiency.
On the first day we decided on a team name (“Dirty Money” – don’t ask) and brainstormed frantically, scribbling ideas on a whiteboard, trying to build on each other’s thoughts and push concepts as far as they’d go. We presented our sketchy, half-formed ideas to our project mentor, Sarah Tate, who immediately helped hone them by asking some tricky questions about our audience and where the biggest financial opportunities might lie.
We ultimately chose to develop a cultural event aggregator/friend-finding service, but it was at the expense of another idea we really liked. Before we went home, we reflected on the work we’d done which was invaluable for preparing for the next day as one member of the team was able to voice her disappointment that we couldn’t make the other idea work. This kind of honesty, encouraged constantly at Squared, helps you support each other and brings you much closer to your teammates.
As the week went on, we began to fall into natural roles allowing us to best use our strengths. We had a strategist, a creative, a researcher, and someone who focused on the logistics and practicalities when the rest of us were busy being too excited about a particular aspect of our idea! We adjusted quickly to different styles of working, relaxing with coffees to have a frank discussion one moment and then drawing on huge sheets of paper the next. It was liberating to be the masters of our own work and produce something that was truly just ours. At the end of the week, we were nervous about pitching the business idea to the wider team and a panel of outside experts brought in by the Squared organizers, but we’d built such strong bonds as a group that we all wanted to do Team Dirty Money justice. All in all, an incredible week – even better than Week One.
Katie:
It’s hard to believe Week 2 is already over. It seems like only yesterday that we got our first brief and couldn’t wait to get started.
Our challenge was to come up with an online business idea and pitch it to a panel. We started off with some serious brainstorming around consumer needs and behaviors so we could come up with a product that people would want. It was great to have the opportunity to really get our creative juices going!
During the ideation process, the main thing that impressed us was how fast the internet has transformed our world, and how we interact with brands and each other. In such a short span of time we have invented solutions for anything and everything – we had to cast aside ideas almost as soon as we had them as we discovered they’d already been done!
In the end this insight informed our idea: a social media listings site that aggregates content from across different platforms and can be customized by the user. We knew that people search across various websites when making a decision about a place to go or a service to use, and we wanted to save them time by putting them all in one place. It took us a few days to reach our idea so things got a bit frantic as we put our pitch together and the deadline approached, but the presentation went smoothly and the panel loved our idea, which was fantastic.
We now have a new project, and it will be a great opportunity to apply our learnings from this week. We want to focus on getting out of our comfort zones in the safe environment of the course, and to allow time for devising creative ways to deliver our presentation. It promises to be another exciting week!
Jassmine:
So it’s the end of Week 2 and I think I can speak for every single one of the Squares when I say we are all exhausted! Having to work in teams to come up with an online business idea, revenue model and launch strategy has been great fun, but there was also a competitive element amongst the groups and everyone worked incredibly hard all the way through the week to the pitch.
What I particularly enjoyed about Week 2 was that it provided an opportunity to put all of the tools and processes we learned in Week 1 into practice. Having a project to work towards meant the group work models we had looked at during the Foundation Days suddenly had a context and their use became invaluable.
In my team, Team Pug (like Seth, it’s probably best not to ask!), we focused especially on the What/How model. In our industry we are often working on simultaneous projects with tight deadlines, and there is a danger that the execution becomes a box ticking process. This means as a team all the focus is on the ‘what’ (creative brief, script, creative presentation, revisions, production, post-production etc) rather than the ‘how.’ It can be just as essential, however, to consider how the team will work most effectively and efficiently to ensure the project is a success. Important points to consider include:
- Roles within the team
- How the team will communicate with each other
- How any conflicts will be resolved
- How decisions will be made
- How feedback will be delivered
Team Pug took some time at the very start of the project to agree guidelines about how we would work together, and most importantly, we stuck to them throughout the week. This meant that everyone felt comfortable being completely honest with each other and damaging or distracting conflicts were avoided. There was a strong sense of trust within the team as we knew that the ‘what’ would get done because everyone knew ‘how’ we were going to achieve it. It meant that while Week 2 involved a lot of very hard work, we managed to have a lot of fun together at the same time and the pitch was a success!
Read last week’s post Getting [Squared]: Week 1.