[MUSIC] In our last module, we talked about the second phase of the entrepreneurial life cycle, listening to your customers and partners. On the customer side we said you first need to figure out who your customers are, then find out what their problems are, and how much they would value a solution. As entrepreneurs it's vital that you don't try to sell your customers what you want to produce, but instead produce what they want to buy. We went through the process of identifying your customers, making first contact, and running the meetings, so that you get at least three new pieces of information from each one. On the partner side, we discussed information you need to gain from potential suppliers and channel partners. In particular, make sure your suppliers understand your problems, and encourage them to offer recommendations on how they can solve your problems. For channel partners, make sure you understand their business models well enough to explain them to somebody else. Regarding both customers and partners, we stress the importance of keeping detailed notes, and developing score cards to rate potential customers and partners. The other concept we talked about was how to define your product. We introduced the idea that your total product is not just what you're producing, but the total value you're offering your customer directed towards solving their underlying problems. As part of that discussion, we talked about the augmented product, which is the expected product plus intentional differentiation. That differentiation is the core of what we'll be talking about today, which is the third stage of the entrepreneurial life cycle: planning your strategy. Buck's going to talk about the importance of strategically planning the ways in which your product can differentiate you from your competitors. Using Porter's five forces, he's going to walk you through the major competitive forces you need to consider before entering a market. He's then going to discuss how you can use a SWAD analysis to form a strategic identity, and identify the strategic initiatives you''l need to implement your strategy. Throughout this module, we'll see how the information you gained by listening to your customers and partners is critical to devising a strategy that will allow you to contain a sustainable competitive advantage. This advantage is going to be not only what makes your big idea happen, but also makes it last. In the modules ahead, we'll show how successful entrepreneurs translate their strategic identity into a business model, and use this structure to help guide the direction of the venture. To do that though, we first need to determine our strategic identity, and to do that, we have to learn how to be different.
