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Developing business ideas for drone technologies
Developing business ideas for drone technologies

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3 Demonstration activities

Described image
Figure 5 A drone flying over a field

An incredibly effective way to show potential investors and other stakeholders (such as customers) the value of your product or service is to provide a demonstration of it. For example, open calls, such as the ones supported by the ICAERUS project, will have demonstration activities as part of their funding process. Demonstration activities may take place as part of your initial pitch, such as a prototype, or a more developed product you are pitching for growth investment (think of Dragons’ Den). A demonstration may also come at the end of the project period where funded start-ups showcase the results of their implemented ideas, such as in the ICAERUS project’s drone technologies and data analytics technologies in farming, forestry and rural challenges.

Activity 3

Timing: Allow approximately 20 minutes.

Some of the most important aspects of an effective demonstration of your business idea come before you even set foot in the demonstration space. That is, preparation and practise.

In this next video, Mackenzie Baert, Project Manager at reframe.food talks about the dos and don’ts of product demonstrations. While watching the video, take notes on preparations you might make for demonstrating your drone business idea.

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Video 4
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  1. What would be the top two suggestions you would give to Open Call recipients preparing for their demonstrations?
  2. What would be the top three suggestions you would give to Open Call recipients to avoid in their product demonstrations?
  3. How do prototype demonstrations differ from other demonstrations?
  4. What is a recent memorable and excellent demonstration you’ve seen? What made it memorable and excellent?
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Discussion

As with elevator pitches, a demonstration, showcase, or even a presentation or simulation should be tailored to the audience. For example, showcases to other industry experts or peers familiar with the technologies you are using will expect you to use industry jargon effectively. For example, they might want to hear about the technical affordances (i.e. likely outputs or outcomes) of your product or service – very often in comparison to other or earlier models.

It is important to consider the degree of detail required by your customers. Some customers will be very knowledgeable on the technical details of how you are achieving the outcomes or solutions through your idea, while others are simply interested in the solutions themselves and would not be as interested in how they are achieved. For example, industry peers may be extremely interested in the detail of how a particular drone sprayer achieves a certain output level and spray area, whereas a farmer who is unfamiliar with drone technology may be less interested (at first) in how it achieves this and more interested in the spray area’s coverage, its reliability in achieving that coverage and its impact on overall costs and labour.

It’s also worth noting that in areas of technological innovation, such as those that covered in this course, community education is an important part of developing a market (Carli et al., 2023). In some cases, you will need to assume that the stakeholders have very little knowledge of the innovation your business idea harnesses, hence, you will need to consider how you can market your idea in a way that helps them to understand your value proposition.