Assignment:
Small business management class.
Please answer the two questions from the article below:
1)Which one of the cues from the SCAMPER tool is best illustrated in the article? As part of the answer explain how Nicky Bronner used it to recognize a business opportunity.
2)Which one of the five major pitfalls that hinder innovation was Nicky Bronner able to sidestep according to the facts in the article? Explain why.
Article:
BOSTON -- Starting a new candy brand from scratch might seem ill-fated in an industry filled with iconic brands like M&Ms and Snickers. But that isn't stopping Nicky Bronner.
The home-schooled 15-year-old is out to build Unreal Brands Inc., a food business on a mission to "unjunk" snacks by creating products that contain only natural ingredients.
"I love to eat candy," said the sandy-haired teenager while surrounded by samples of his new products, which are near-replicas of candies such as Milky Way and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.
Nicky came up with the business idea following a dispute with his parents regarding his sweet tooth and their push for him to eat healthier snacks. His start-up's candy will land in Target Corp., Kroger Co., BJ's Wholesale Club Inc. and CVS Caremark Corp. over the next few months.
The teenager has an advantage that might help him to break into the $31 billion candy industry: his millionaire father, entrepreneur and angel investor Michael Bronner.
Mr. Bronner in 1980 founded digital-ad firm Digitas Inc., which was sold two decades later to Publicis Groupe SA for more than $1 billion. He then founded financial-rewards company Upromise Inc., and sold it in 2006 to SLM Corp., also known as Sallie Mae, for more than $300 million.
"If we don't do it, who will?" said Mr. Bronner, an avid jogger and yoga enthusiast whose family resides in the Boston suburb of Brookline, Mass. It takes "innovators" and "disrupters" to spark the kind of drastic cultural shift that Unreal Brands hopes to achieve, adds the 53-year-old married father of two, who is a founding partner of Unreal Brands.
Allen Adamson, managing director of WPP Group PLC's branding agency, Landor Associates, said typically launching a candy brand requires deep pockets. "You're battling for the hearts and minds of kids in a brutally competitive space," he said. "The big, established brands are everywhere. They've been around forever and they know how to tell their story."
To try to overcome that challenge, Mr. Bronner set up meetings for his son with venture capitalists, retail executives and food scientists, and he has financed trips to Europe and South America to source ingredients and talent.
The start-up's 19 employees include former executives from Procter & Gamble Co., Kellogg Co., Google Inc. and Godiva Chocolatier Inc.
"You don't find many kids that have this kind of access to capital to get an idea started," said Len Schlesinger, former chief operating officer of Limited Brands Inc., current president of Babson College and Unreal Brands' nonexecutive chairman of the board.
Mr. Bronner also has garnered the support of his friend, Tom Brady, and the football star's supermodel wife, Gisele Bundchen. The famous couple has pledged to promote the start-up's mission from their Twitter and Facebook feeds once it launches. Similarly, after being introduced last year to Jack Dorsey through business associates, Mr. Bronner won over the Silicon Valley star as well. The Twitter co-founder said he will advocate on behalf of Unreal Brands on his own Twitter feed.
Unreal Brands is a for-profit but like many ventures led by the millennial generation, it has a social mission.
It is looking to recreate traditional junk foods, so that they taste the same but lack the kind of unhealthy ingredients that can cause health problems such as obesity, heart disease and diabetes, the company said.
But Unreal Brands' candy bars, which cost the same as traditional competitors, still contain sugar and chocolate, and nutritionists say children and adults alike would be better off replacing candy bars altogether with nonprocessed foods like fruits and vegetables.
Unreal Brands resulted from a disagreement two years ago between Nicky and his parents over the fate of a sack full of Halloween candy. Nicky said he threw a fit when his mom and dad tossed out more than half of the sweets he had collected. His parents argued that the candies contained too many harmful ingredients, he said.
Rather than concede to his parents' logic, the teenager began searching online for evidence proving otherwise. He discovered that not only were his favorite snacks loaded with sugar, corn syrup and hydrogenated fat, but that obesity and diabetes rates had jumped in recent years among children his own age. "For once, my dad was actually right," he said.
He then wondered if it was possible to create healthier but equally delicious versions of his favorite candies. His older brother Kris suggested he get in touch with renowned food scientist Peter Barham for help. Searching Google, Nicky said he found the U.K. molecular gastronomist's phone number and gave him a call.
Dr. Barham referred him to Adam Melonas, a 30-year-old progressive chef who was working in Madrid. With his father's blessing, Nicky proposed that he and Mr. Melonas team up to create an alternative food company.
Mr. Melonas said the teen spoke with a level of maturity and poise atypical of someone so young, and that he was instantly attracted to the opportunity.
Mr. Melonas, who is also a co-founder, soon moved to the U.S. where he began re-engineering some of the world's most popular snacks. The job took two years to complete, more than twice as long as he anticipated, the Australian-born chef said.
The start-up operates out of a narrow office on the fifth floor of a historic commercial building in downtown Boston. The company expects to relocate to a larger property a few miles away in the fall, where it will bring on several chefs to work under Mr. Melonas to recreate items in other categories besides candy, such as soda.
CVS Caremark will be the first to carry the candies in its 7,300 stores nationwide starting next month. Judy Sansone, senior vice president of merchandising for Woonsocket, R.I., drugstore chain, said she cannot remember the last time a new or small candy business struck a deal with the retailer. Recent dealings have been for Hershey Co.'s Air Delight, Mars Inc.'s Pretzel M&M's and Nestle SA's Skinny Cow.
Though the father-and-son team has raised an undisclosed amount of venture capital from firms like Khosla Ventures of Menlo Park, Calif., they still lack many of the resources that the big candy makers boast, such as their own manufacturing plant or a large, dedicated sales force.
And there have been other challenges, too. The teenager and his dad disagreed on the candy packaging, for instance. His dad wanted red for the logo on the peanut-butter cups. Nicky wanted yellow.
Nicky's preferences so far have won out.