This deck is a part of an eight-day introductory course that I originally designed for the residents of Inle Lake (Nyang Shwe), Myanmar during my volunteer work with Partnership for Change org. This is a basic introductory course for those who wish to start a businesses but aren't sure where to begin or what would be an effective way to run and operate a company geared for Western customers. This deck is free for anyone to modify and use, but please keep in mind that I do not own copyrights for most of the images on those slides (with some exceptions).

1. Disruption & collaboration.
How small businesses can stand up and win big against large corporations
that control the market. And the importance of healthy, diverse marketplace.

2. What you’ll learn.
• Understand how disruption and collaboration can
help small businesses.
• Understand how you can leverage your community
to create opportunities and the importance of
maintaining that community and the environment
you are operating in.
Outline for today’s and tomorrow’s lessons:

3. Review.

4. ❶ What is the
competition?
❷ What is the demand?
❸ What are the costs?
❹ What is the ROI?

5. What tools can you use to
research your decisions?

6. What is
diversification?

9. Experiments.
• Try your ideas on small scale
before going big.
• Learn from those test runs
whether it is a good idea.
• Not the same as market
research, your own opinion or
prediction about what would
happen. Experiments are
actually you conducting the
business on a small scale.

10. Measure, individually.

11. Things you can measure:
• Income.
• Costs.
• Amount of work required.

12. Feedback is a gift.

13. Collect & synthesize.
• Collect a good sample of
feedback (at least 10 people).
• Sort your feedback based on
opinions and suggestions.
• Think how it could apply to
your business.

14. Applying feedback.
Evaluate each customer
complaint, praise or suggesting:
• Is it feasible to make the
changes?
• Does it align with your
business objectives?
• Learn about your
business from the
customers’ perspective.

15. Empathy exercises.
• Create a customer story for
your business or product.
• Be your own customer. If you
hate your product, your
customer probably does too.

16. Kinds of information.
• Data about the market:
competition, demand.
• Operational data: costs,
potential revenues, ROI.
• Customer data: feedback,
average & ideal customer
traits.

17. Google Sheets.
Have you downloaded Google Sheets? Did you start tracking your data? Don’t
forget to add more data every day. Any questions or problems with Google
Sheets?

18. Creating charts.
Do you remember how to do it with Google Sheets?

19. Disruption & collaboration.
Lessons from some of the most successful businesses in
the world.

20. Collaboration.
• Successful business
collaborations could
completely change the bottom
line of an enterprise.
• Badly managed or non-
existent ties with other
businesses and agencies
could damage your business.
Big time.

21. Collaboration.
• A team of like-minded small
businesses have a potential to
change attitudes and even laws.
• Together, small businesses might
negotiate better prices from the
suppliers.
• When businesses get together
they can have a larger buying
power to advertise, thus bringing
more customers to their sector.
• It’s very common for businesses
to partner with governments to
mutually benefit each other.

22. What are some examples
of collaboration that you
know?

23. Mini-assignment.
❶ Pick a business/product.
❷ Think of how and whom/which
org with could you
collaborate.
❸ Come up with at least 3
collaboration ideas and
present in class.

24. Disruption.
• Disruption means finding new ways of
conducting a business.
• This method can “disrupt” or “break”
the existing market or industry. The
“old” way of doing things is no longer
good enough.
• Companies who can achieve this often
become very prosperous very quickly.
• Alternatively, those companies benefit
or change the marketplace and are
often good for the customer.
• Most often “disruption” is referred to in
online business but there are
examples in the real-world as well.

28. Mini-assignment.
❶ Think of an example how an
industry has got disrupted in
the past. Example: cars
replaced horses.
❷ Present in class.

29. Recap.
Let’s list all the things we’ve learned so far that we have
to know and work on to have a successful business.

30. The list.
• Research.
• Diversify.
• Manage feedback.
• Apply empathy.
• Track everything.
• Collaborate.
• Disrupt*.
*Depends on your business objectives.

31. Let’s make a plan.

32. Assignment.
❶ Research your opportunities online.
Ex.: what is the most popular
business type here? What can this
community use more of?
❷ Plan how you are going to diversify
your business.
❸ Create a strategy how you are going
to collect data and which one (i.e.:
customer feedback, earnings etc.)
❹ Can you create meaningful, beneficial
collaborations? Make your case.
❺ Is your business disruptive? If so,
explain how.