Assignment 2
Creative Business Opportunities for the Firecracker Industry
A report submitted to
Prof. Vijayta Doshi
In partial fulfillment of the requirements of the course
Enhancing the Creative Self
By
188198 Rishabkar G B
1911052 B.V.N. Meghana
1911151 Mukund Periwal
1911220 Satyajeet Omkar
On
28-11-2020
Creative Business Opportunities for the Firecracker Industry
The need to recognize Creative Business Opportunities
A majority of us expected and witnessed that this Diwali, amidst the pandemic, was a bad one
for the firecrackers industry. This festival of lights has indeed cast a shadow of debt into the life
of the makers of fireworks. They have lost more than 100 days of their productions of different
types of fireworks. Hence, they need to develop creative business ideas to survive in a
competitive market.
Creativity Tools used
To come up with the 3 opportunities, we have used the following tools of Creativity.
Tool I - The SCAMPER Technique: Using the SCAMPER technique, we discussed the
following possible ideas for each of the letters.
S – Substitute: Considering that most families had celebrated Diwali majorly by
decorating the inside and outside of their houses with DIYAS, one of the ideas for the
firecracker makers could be to work on mild crackers in the shape of Diyas. That is,
we had the thought of substituting the classic crackers with the form of Decorative
Diyas.
C – Combine: Apart from Diwali being called the festival of lights; we all know that
Diwali is very popular for its Desserts. Different places of our country have different
traditions for Desserts during Diwali. Hence, we thought of combining or partnering
with the local Sweet shops and having customized Desserts in the shape of crackers,
benefitting both the local sweet shops and the firecracker makers.
A – Adapt: Thus, by the substitution and combining ideas we have come up with, we
have the added advantage of adapting to the markets of people who majorly celebrate
Diwali by decorating their houses in and out with Diyas and for the market of people
for whom Diwali is not just a Festival of Lights but also a Day of Desserts.
M – Modify: The modification idea we came up with was similar to the substitution
idea of modifying the form of firecrackers into the structure of diyas with reduced
intensity of the combustible substances. This is to facilitate not only mild crackers as
many people prefer but also even brighter and beautiful decoration items for the
festival of lights.
P – Put to other use: As a thought to modify the use of crackers, one idea we came
up with was to use crackers (majorly the ones that produce smoke of different colors)
for various outdoor and indoor photo shoots and also in Photo studios.
E – Eliminate: A significant concern we observed and felt ourselves regarding
crackers was that, people's respect towards the environment is growing fast. Certain
people are highly concerned about the environmental impacts of everything they use
and are ready to pay a relatively extra price for it. We decided to eliminate crackers
giving out sounds of unbearable decibels and work on noise-free crackers as much as
possible in this thought process.
R – Reverse: One thought about reversing the function of firecrackers we could
come up with, was that – Many people are concerned about the adverse effects of
firecrackers on the health of living beings and that of the environment. Hence, we
thought of creating firecrackers to help the environment with the exhalation of gases
with medicinal values for both the people and other living beings and healing values
to the environment.
Finally, we decided to use a combination of all these 7 elements of the SCAMPER technique to
come up with the below mentioned 3 opportunities for the Firecracker Industry.
Tool II – The 6 Thinking Hats: After coming with ideas from the SCAMPER technique, we
decided to use the 6 thinking hats to think from different angles about the problem and evaluate
the opportunities we came up with. Our group used the 6 hats parallelly as follows:
The Blue Hat: We tried to start with being realistic about the bigger picture and the
subject we needed to address. Due to the pandemic, many firecracker makers lost their
business, and we needed to come up with creative business opportunities for them to
survive.
The Red Hat: Next, we used the red hats and realized how we feel about this issue. We
could learn some emotions like: being concerned about the environment, the sound
pollution affecting the health of many people, and how certain crackers are harmful even
to other living beings.
The Green and Yellow Hats: We later realized how we used the green and yellow hats
to develop creative solutions to the above big picture and the concerns we had with it and
then worked on understanding what was right about the ideas we came up with.
The White and Black Hats: At the end, we used the White and the Black hats to
evaluate the opportunities we came up with, with certain information we had like people
growing concerned about the environment, willingness to pay a little more for the same,
and the growing trend of reduced use of firecrackers and more decorative items to
celebrate Diwali.
Therefore, this is the pattern our group has followed to develop the 3 creative business
opportunities for the firecracker business. The following are some of the innovative business
opportunities we could think of for the Firecracker Industry.
Opportunity I – Producing crackers in the form of Decorative Diyas:
As mentioned above, a majority of households decorate their houses in the interiors and
exteriors on a large scale on the occasion of Diwali. Using this opportunity, the makers
could create crackers in the structure of Diyas, which could be long lasting and give
better illumination and sparkles than normal Diyas by utilizing the cracker powder.
Opportunity II – Promoting crackers producing colored smoke as a way of
properties for external photo shoots as well as in Photo Studios:
The second opportunity we saw was using the different colored smokey crackers to give
better background and visual effects to photoshoots. Photoshoots have become a major
trend today, and people try and get it as innovative as possible. As all of them cannot
afford fixed on VR settings, crackers like this would be viable options. Hence this should
be one opportunity for the Firecracker industries to grab, and the promotions could be
done communicating this value to the target market.
Opportunity III – Producing and Promoting crackers exhaling gases of
medicinal/useful and Harmless gases:
Finally, as the pandemic has had a very large-scale impact on Peoples mindsets, many
people have become very health conscious. The firecracker industry could reduce the use
of raw materials that emit harmful gases and work on using natural materials to produce
medicinal values on consumption. E.g., Gas killing mosquitoes, gases suitable for
breathing, etc.,
These are the 3 opportunities our group majorly worked on. We always reiterated to
ourselves that the world had had a drastic change due to the pandemic, and every industry needs
to update accordingly to survive.
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