Understanding Technology, Value proposition, Minimum Viable Product, Potential Market Size and Needs

Hello, last week we have finalized the team for the semester project and have chosen five potential patents that our team would like to work on. As for this week, the primary goal was to reduce those five patents into two or three and actually meet the inventors to gain in-depth knowledge of both the product and its market. Among the two patents that we are considering which are: the low cost highly accurate traffic monitoring system and the network-connected, low-power early warning device for natural and man-made disasters (US 20160093191 A1), we were able to get a better insight on especially the latter patent. The inventor for this patent is professor Joshua Bloom, who is a professor in the department of astronomy at UC Berkeley. He was able to explain to us the overall system of this device in which how both the hardware and software interact with each other. 

The detection device is connected via network to user’s smartphone warning about any natural or man-made disasters such as but not limited to earthquakes, tornados, hurricanes, chemical plants, and tsunamis. The low power device is also always on, meaning that even if the wifi is down, it will go to cellular network. However, he also mentioned that this is not a novel invention as in Japan there is an iOS device that functions similarly in case of an earthquake. But as far as US is concerned, no such device nor system exist and is relatively new. 

This made our team think about which category this device falls into among the three types of market which are: existing market, resegmented market, and new market. To begin with, we found it difficult to fit into the category of an existing market as it has no noticeable competitor. Although this device is a combination of preexisting ideas and could potentially fulfill a niche, the best categorization seems to be a new market in which the device was not introduced due to geographic limitation. In terms of the potential market size, our initial calculation was based off on the 200 million users of smart phones in US. However, the professor’s approach was to base off the estimate from the fire alarm market which was $0.5 billion. For worldwide we would be looking at a $10 billion market. 

As for the minimum viable product, a prototype has already been created with a production cost of $95 which is expected to be reduced through mass production. The value we are providing to the customers is their sense of feeling protected and safe from unknown disasters through simple and convenient methods. Low cost, low power, easy to use, easy to install are all the features that are delivered to the customers that would allow them to focus on other important matters while the device takes care of their fear for the unknown future.