[The definition of what I believe are ‘Problems Worth Solving’, may change over time. As of Jan 18, 2017, the following is the definition and I will keep this page updated as it evolves.]
Problem discovery is one of the key features of Pieneers platform. This blog is the first step in collecting all (as many as possible) of the problems and I plan to post about various problems around the globe, that are needed to be solved and are worth solving!
OK now, What are Problems Worth Solving (#ProWoSo)? A little more detail about the problems that I might post:
* They could be from any domain/discipline, for example: farmer/farming, construction, urban living/commute, running a small business and medical IoT device etc etc, you get the idea. I will try to post very high level details of the problem, and will include the references that were used and the ones you can use to get started on working on it if it interests you.
* As I believe, problems are nothing but the opportunities! I hope (will try) to explain the details of opportunity that each problem presents. Unfortunately there is a craze in silicon valley to pursue next billion dollar opportunity and ignore the rest. I believe, if there is a customer need/demand, even though it is smaller than Billion dollar opportunity, it is worth addressing. For the money minded, you won’t be a billionaire but it could be a good lifestyle startup/business. It is always really tricky to get a good sense market size but will try my best. With these posts, I hope to inspire folks to pursue market opportunities of all sizes and all domains.
* The scale/size of the problems could be from small to very big, for example: a nifty tool to manage personal expenses TO solving pollution of environmental/natural resources. In other words some problems could be addressed by a student as part of the class/thesis project and some might need millions and a big team! Will try to avoid the commonly known global, broad and generic challenges like global poverty, hunger etc. As these are very well known and also I believe, you have lot of sub, sub-sub problems that need solving before/while solving these global scale problems. These lower level problems range in scale from small to medium to large and these are #ProWoSo, I will try to present in the posts.
* Based on my available bandwidth, I might also research a possible solution and present my thoughts on it. Along with that, I will also present info on the teams/startups that are known to work on that problem.
The core purpose of these posts is to spread the word on problems that are out there and are in the need of solving. My hope is students or entrepreneurs, who are looking into problems to take on, instead of working on whatever is in FAD, will come to the blog and get inspired to tackle them!
Now, go tackle a #ProWoSo!
Dr. Krishna Vuppala
ps: As the initial focus is on college students, I want to create a collection of problems that students’ teams will be able to tackle and are within their reach both in skills & resources. I will tag these #ProWoSo with ‘Low Hanging Fruit’.