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Effectuation & Uncertainty Trying to Create a Market from Waste at TerraCycle. Stuart Read Professor. Double Feature. Heuristics for decision-making in uncertainty (called effectuation) Story of a venture (focusing on some of the key moments).
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Effectuation & UncertaintyTrying to Create a Market from Waste at TerraCycle Stuart Read Professor
Double Feature • Heuristics for decision-making in uncertainty(called effectuation) • Story of a venture(focusing on some of the key moments)
To get started – effectual principles invert some of the logic traditionally taught in business school Causal principles (blue) what is taught in bschool • Effectual principles (red) the logic of expert entrepreneurs 3
2001: A freshman at Princeton, 19 year-old Szaky sees red wiggler worms turning organic waste into high quality fertilizer Prototype a business model that might convert this observation into a venture which uses waste as input.
Where to Start Goals. Given (based on prediction) • Means. Theingredients ofnew opportunities: • Who I am • What I know • Whom I know
April 2003: TerraCycle wins Carrot Capital Competition. Prize is $1million - and investors aiming to “professionalize” the firm. Terracycle has $500 in the bank. Accept the prize?
Risk, Return and Resources Expected Return. Calculate upside potential and pursue the (risk adjusted) best opportunity. • Affordable Loss.Calculate downside potential and risk no more than you can afford to lose.
Out of money, with customer orders pending, Terracycle needs to buy packaging for its organic fertilizer. What to do?
TerracycleOrganic fertilizer packaged in used plastic containers
From there, expansion into “upcycled” consumer products, built using consumer waste, collected by consumers
2007: Walgreens orders 100,000 pencil cases for delivery in 3 weeks (in time for “back to school” sales) Terracycle finds a Canadian recycler with a warehouse full of pouches. But Terracycle needs Kraft permission.
Attitude Toward Others Competition.Set up transactionalrelationships with customers andsuppliers. Partnership.Build your “future” together with customers, suppliers and even prospective competitors. 13
As the TerraCycle product range has grown, the firm needed more and more partners to help them “eliminate the idea of waste”
TerraCycle has achieved critical mass with more than 250 unique consumer products
Surprise Avoid Surprises. • Leverage Surprises.Basis of new opportunities. 18
Underlying Logic & What to Do To the extent we can predict the future, we can control it. PLAN To the extent we can control the future, we don’t need to predict it. CO-CREATE 19
Tom Szaky does not carry a business card. He carries a stamp so he can stamp his information into your (waste) paper
So creating new opportunities looks a lot less like a puzzle with a fixed set of pieces and a possible “right” solution…
To more of a crazy quilt – assembled from the things at hand by the people who commit to working on it.
Effectuation & UncertaintyTrying to Create a Market from Waste at TerraCycle Stuart Read Professor