Innovation, marketing and digital: Test your business creativity with Edition 15 of our quiz!
This insightful feature from YourStory tests and strengthens your business acumen! Here are five questions to kick off this fifteenth quiz. Let’s go!
This weekly quiz from YourStory tests your domain knowledge, business acumen, and lateral thinking skills (see last week’s quiz here). In this fifteenth edition of the quiz, we present five issues tackled by real-life entrepreneurs in their startup journeys.
What would you do if you were in their shoes? At the end of the quiz, you will find out what the entrepreneurs themselves actually did. Would you do things differently?
Check out YourStory’s Book Review section as well, with takeaways from over 320 titles on creativity and entrepreneurship, and our weekend PhotoSparks section on creativity in the arts.
Q1: The millennial factor
Millennials are key drivers of the boom in content and retail via the internet, mobiles, and social media. Being online is necessary but not sufficient for brands to cater to millennials effectively. What else must brands do to engage with this demographic?
Q2: Innovation – frugal and beyond
Much has been written of the Indian flair for jugaad or frugal innovation. While some of these quick fixes may work in certain contexts, they may not be sustainable at scale. So how can these innovations be improved upon?
Q3: Clothing and gender
While men’s clothes are designed to be functional, with large and comfortable pockets, women’s clothing has tended to have tiny or non-existent pockets, with more of a focus on fashion. So how can this historic bias be addressed?
Q4: Viral marketing
‘Viral’ may not be a good word to use in these days of the pandemic era, but viral marketing is the dream of many agencies and entrepreneurs. Elements of viral effects include emotional hooks, calls to action, and resonance with events of the day. So what’s a good framework to engage with this viral marketing phenomenon?
Q5: Knowledge and attitude
It is generally regarded as important to have deep domain expertise to succeed in business, and respond to or learn from every comment made about you. But does it always have to be this way? What’s a better way of learning and progressing?
Answers!
Congratulations on having come this far! But there’s more to come – answers to these five questions (below), as well as links to articles with more details on the entrepreneurs’ solutions. Happy reading, happy learning – and happy creating!
A1: The millennial factor
Millennials not only prefer digital shopping options, but are also willing to explore and vibe with differentiated brands, explains Ankur Dayal, Co-founder of ecommerce provider - Primarc Pecan.
Millennials are influenced by a brand's identity and marketing efforts, and pay attention to the brand’s positioning and values. It also helps to enhance their experience with online reviews, ratings, enhanced customer service, instant delivery, and additional perks. Read more tips by Ankur here.
A2: Innovation – frugal and beyond
“Our MSMEs consider every jugaad as innovation. They are creative but every creativity is not innovation. Any creativity or jugaad needs to be refined for standardisation, scale, and commercialisation to treat that as innovation,” explains Amit Kumar, Founder of MSME education and advisory platform - MSMEx.
But with upskilling, training, and better access to capital, MSMEs can scale up their innovations systematically and compete for the long-term, according to Sandip Chhettri, CEO of B2B trade portal TradeIndia. Read more about MSME innovation opportunities here.
A3: Clothing and gender
“I don't find any specific reason why women's outfits should not have functional pockets. They are either faux pockets or just enough to keep coins. That's just not fair,” explains Jayalakshmi Ranjith, Trichur-based Founder of Pockets13.
Her apparel startup is designing clothes for women that defy age-old biases in areas like pocket features. The clothes are customised the way women want: sans the standard industry sizes and with functional pockets. Read more of how Jayalakshmi’s activities here, in the world’s sixth-largest women’s apparel market.
A4: Viral marketing
“Memes are easy, crisp, convenient, and above all - humorous. Their tendency to go instantly viral, coupled with high recall value, makes them suitable tools for marketing,” explains Taaran Chanana, Managing Director and Co-founder, MemeChat App.
“Marketers need to look for the right set of ‘memers’ to create their content,” he adds. But timing is key, since memes are dynamic, versatile, and time-sensitive. Memes allow you to be trendsetters as well, not just trend followers. Read more impactful tips on meme marketing from Taaran here.
A5: Knowledge and attitude
“You need to be a little numb and a little dumb,” says Ranveer Brar, celebrity chef, MasterChef India judge, author, and food producer. Dealing with criticisms can be tough, and he says one must know how to differentiate between constructive criticism and someone having a bad day.
Ranveer advises young creators to not indulge in overthinking every comment made on social media. Learning what to listen to, when, and how is a key part of growth. Having a beginner’s mindset to learn new things and overcome incumbent bias is also key. Read more from this inspiring chef here.
YourStory has also published the pocketbook ‘Proverbs and Quotes for Entrepreneurs: A World of Inspiration for Startups’ as a creative and motivational guide for innovators (downloadable as apps here: Apple, Android).
Edited by Kanishk Singh
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