20A – Growing Your Social Capital

Domain Expert

1. Who they are, what their background is:
• Brian, who works in the sports industry for a highly respected team in sports.
2. How this person is a "domain expert":
• He is able to see everything that is going on in sales in the sports world along with coming up with other ideas on how to bring them in.
3. How I found and contacted this person:
• I found and contacted this person because I had worked for him in the past and was able to speak over the phone with him.
4. Nature of Exchange: What they did for me, what is the return expectation
• I was able to explain my product idea with him along with being able to get a response from him on what he could see making it better.  In return I told him how I would keep him updated with what is going on with my idea and where I will go with it.
5. How will including them enhance my ability to exploit an opportunity:
• He believed that it was a great idea but had mentioned that it is a very costly idea and if it does not work it can become a major let down along with a lot of money lost.

Market Expert

1. Who they are, what their background is: 
• Eric, is a computer systems major and has a passion for sports.
2. How this person is a "market expert":
• I would not consider him an expert but he is the closest thing I could find to it.  Being able to perform knowledge with computer systems could be a major key.
3. How I found and contacted this person:
• Eric is a friend of mine that I have also worked with in the past.
4. Nature of Exchange: What they did for me, what is the return expectation:
• He was able to explain to be the average costs that I might have to be investing to get this done.
5. How will including them enhance my ability to exploit an opportunity:
• Including Eric will enhance my ability to consistently have knowledge on computer systems incase I need to make any adjustments.

Industry Supplier

1. Who they are, what their background is:
• Suzanne who works with Apple.
2. How this person is a "industry supplier":
• She is an industry supplier because she works with the tech support at Apple.
3. How I found and contacted this person:
• I went to Apple to ask tech questions about their iPads.
4. Nature of Exchange: What they did for me, what is the return expectation:
• Suzanne was able to express to me how it can be really expensive to fix iPads and there are times where they can get serious problems.
5. How will including them enhance my ability to exploit an opportunity:
• I will be able to have background knowledge on what will be the most efficient way about creating my tablet.

Finally: Reflect
I think being able to find a target market can be somewhat hard but at the same time I feel like I have found my right target market being sports fans.  What I found interesting was that I need another target market.  I was able to see that I also needed to target the tech market to get more information on some things that I truthfully don't know much about.  Being able to reach out to people more experienced in something than me was tough but made me eager to learn.