ENTI 317: Entrepreneurial Thinking Worksheet

Entrepreneurial Thinking Concept: Customer Segment and Early Adopter

Worksheet: Defining Early Adopters
Due: With assignment #1

Learning Objective: When looking at your customer segment, it is very important to

identify your “early adopters,” those who have the problem and are willing to pay for an
unknown solution to solve it. If you interview and talk to the wrong group within your
customer segment, then you may get bad feedback on a great idea. You also want to serve
a very small group of people really well at the start, you can always expand to a larger
customer segment later on. This is a concept that many ENTI 317 students struggle with but
is one of the keys to being successful in the course.

Instructions:

1. Watch this short video: Diffusion of Innovation Theory: The Adoption Curve
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QnfWhtujPA
2. Then, based on your single best idea from the problem identification worksheet, develop a
very specific early adopter group. Go beyond age, gender, & income descriptions and think
about who these people are and how they act; how would you recognize them in a crowd?
Why do they want a solution? These will be the very first people that buy your solution,
knowing that it is brand new and may not work perfectly yet, they will help you to make it
better!
3. Some ideas might also need to define an innovator, see the instructions below.
4. Your next steps will be to interview these people for subsequent worksheets and
assignments.

Additional Resources:

“How Great Leaders Inspire Action” – the whole thing is great, but 10:43-13:20 is particularly relevant
https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action?language=en

“Identifying early adopters”

https://www.bdc.ca/en/articles-tools/marketing-sales-export/marketing/pages/identifying-early-
adopters.aspx

“Where Do You Fit on the Engagement Adoption Curve?”

http://incentive-intelligence.typepad.com/incentive_intelligence/2011/06/where-do-you-fit-on-the-
engagement-adoption-curve.html

“How to find and win over your early adopters”

https://www.inc.com/women-2/how-to-find-and-win-over-early-adopters.html
 ENTI 317: Entrepreneurial Thinking Worksheet
Based on your best problem from the “Personal Opportunity Identification Worksheet” complete the
following:

Who are your Early Adopters? Describe them in detail. Where will you find them? What stands out
about this group? Why do they want your new and unknown solution? Use this description in
Assignment #1.

“Early adopters are the opinion leaders, influencers, and their endorsement plays a key role in reaching
the majority. They are often bloggers, YouTube channel owners or social media influencers. They are
willing to test new ideas…”

Innovators

For most ideas in ENTI 317, we group innovators & early adopters together, but for some ideas, there
should be a distinction. Ideas that have significant testing that needs to be done will likely have
innovators as well as early adopters. For example, some new technologies need to “beta tested:” a
subset of the target audience gets to try the technology out and provide feedback about how to make it
better & more functional. It will likely have “bugs,” and won’t work perfectly yet. For example, Rosalynn
was an innovator for a new technology testing horses’ fitness. She was asked to be a part of the testing
phase because she recognized the significance of the problem and the opportunity for a solution. She
also had experience and credibility that could help to make the product better. She volunteered her time
and her horses for part of the testing and was keen to help to get the product ready for the broader
market. She was supposed to be at the testing for 1 hour, but because of the issues with the technology,
it took closer to 6 hours, but as an innovator, she knew this was a part of the process and didn’t lose
faith in the product like someone from the early adopter or early majority might. If this is a part of your
solution, you might have innovators as well. If so, complete the following section as well:
 ENTI 317: Entrepreneurial Thinking Worksheet
Who are your Innovators? Describe them in detail. How are they different from the early adopters? Why
do they want to try a completely untested solution? What is important to them? Try and be as specific
as possible, how would you pick them out in a group of people? What kinds of behaviors make them
stand out?

“Innovators are the first to adopt, responsible for introducing to a larger population, must get them on
board first – risk takers, willing to accept “bugs” or beta versions of the solution, willing to try completely
untested ideas. They REALLY want a solution!”