Today I researched my last idea and watched a video on the future of the economics and technology of small businesses. From the videos I watched I found that most small businesses plan to adapt to the new business future through technology and a streamlined competitive pricing plan. Businesses will have to specialize deals that focus on certain demographics. Lastly there will need to be an increased focus on personal service because eventually prices will all be so similar the sale is going to go to whoever makes the customer feel best. These are all things that we I can put into my questions for the businesses of Rutland.
I have been watching videos today on the psychology of employees and what makes an employee productive and happy. I found a video called The Social Context of Work Environments, it talks about the Hawthorne Effect, a study conducted in Hawthorne, Illinois that found that when a participant in a behavioral study knows they are being observed they will change their behavior. This effect was then applied to the business world and it was found that employees are more likely to be productive when their managers and co-workers are interested and attentive of their employees and co-workers. I think I am going to begin polling the psychological states of several employees at several businesses around Rutland. I will begin working on that questionnaire today.
Today I watched several videos on how young businessmen connect. This came from my first idea of the interconnectivity of entrepreneurs looking to connect. I saw several videos from websites and other forums that try to connect businessmen. From what I saw these sites, like SYG Small Young Business Group, try to connect businesses to investors, and other financiers to make the business run. I am still not finding a lot of good information that I can work with or relate to STEM in this idea. I am still trying to gather information on my other idea which I think I will have a lot more success working with.
I resumed my search for a topic of research today. I began with looking into studies conducted on small businesses across the country to see what made them successful. I found that there are a lot different aspects to making a small business successful. I think I am going to run with this idea, I will poll as many local small businesses as I can to see what they have done to become successful or unsuccessful. I will tie this into STEM by using the psychology of employees (science), the financial situation of the company (math), and then finally building a project to show what it is that makes small businesses successful (engineering). I think my project will be interesting to a lot of people who are looking to start their own business in our area.
Another idea that I will be looking into is what the future holds for these successful companies and what they plan to do to keep their company relevant and running. From the information I have gathered some major things that I will need to look into is, how active the business owner is in his own business, how the employees feel they are treated by their boss, how well the business model is planned, what the company does to promote itself, has the company ever faced hard times, the influence of technology on the business, the pay and financial situation of that business, and many more things that I will be finding out as my research expands. I am very excited about this project and look forward to conducting it. Today was a day for thinking about what my STEM capstone would be about. It took me awhile to come up with my first of three prospective ideas, but after thinking for awhile an idea that I thought would be really cool came to me. That idea was an app, an app that could be used for prospective small businessmen to connect with each other about their startups and to connect with possible investors. I researched several sites, mostly sites on how to create apps and then several ones about how entrepreneurs connect with one another. After about an hour of researching these sites I realized that currently there are about nine websites, that have a strong flow of traffic, that are used primarily to connect prospective businesses. I also found that designing an app takes a lot of skill and training that I would not have been able to learn in the amount of time we had. Despite the outcomes of this research I still have an interest in doing something related to business for my STEM project. I am also wondering, because of this research, how well do small businesses develop and what key things lead to businesses succeeding or failing. Maybe I will research that next, so todays research was definitely not a waste of time.
9/17/14 Hey, welcome to my cribMy name is Stephen Anderson, I am a senior at Rutland High School in Rutland, VT. I am a student in my school's inaugural STEM Capstone class. The class sends out myself and my classmates into the world to find a problem and try to solve it using Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. All of the students in the class have been required to open up blogs to share our progress. This blog is going to document my progress and research on my 2014 STEM Capstone project. I hope you will find this blog educational, fun and maybe even earth shattering.
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