Entrepreneurship and innovation examples. Hammonix, Nobu and Youtube.
by
msincaban (student)
Although faced with many challenges and uncertainties, small businesses continue to expand and flourish across the United States. Small businesses are created through entrepreneurship, involving creativity, energy, proper planning and innovation; they benifit the country by providing opportunities, such as creating new jobs, making profits and improving the quality of a market products. Every small business has its own unique story of success and disparity. Alex Rigopulos and Eran Egozy, founders of Harmonix, a game developer, started out with severely inadequate revenue and failed products; eventually creating a virtual phenomenon known as "Guitar Hero" and "Rock Band" (two music video-games which sky-rocketed the company's success). Chef Nobu spent more than thirty years enduring experimentation, failure and unstable business partner- relationships. Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim simply needed to figure out how to post a video segment, from a party, to the internet for sharing. Thus, the birth of Youtube.com. Without the prevailance of small businesses, we would not be living in the world the way it has been shaped.
Harmonix, founded by Alex Rigopulos and Eran Egozy, is a video game company that created the revolutionary “Guitar Hero” and “Rock Band.” The root of their success
was creativity and innovation, which was covered in class. The story began when Alex and Eran were finishing their degrees at MIT. Both were interested in applying music and technology to non-musicians who want to express themselves through music. Their first product was a CD-ROM called the Axe; it was a joystick music improvisation system which ended up selling 300 copies and failed to keep people entertained for lengthy periods. Next, they worked with Disney to re-innovate the product. Their affiliation with Disney was short-lived. They started another improvisation system project in Japan, for the karaoke industry. The music system did not connect with the users. At that point, Alex and Eran were desperate for a new epiphany. Their revenue was down to zero and it was time to rebuild their business. They finally had investors behind them and secured two million dollars at the bank. “Frequency” was the first electronic game developed by the company. The object of the game was to play rhythms correctly to any song chosen by the player. “Amplitude” followed shortly. Both were unsuccessful, sales-wise. One element that all their products lacked was marketability. Two, they didn’t have mainstream music or brought a connection to the players. These elements fueled the success for “Karaoke Revolution.” The company has created non-music games such as EyeToy:
