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Technology and Livelihood Education

Entrepreneurship
Module 2: Environment and Market
One of your greatest dreams in life is to become a successful entrepreneur. As a person,
you are capable of developing your character and personality and how to respond to some
business challenges and opportunities. You can make things happen by identifying the
opportunities around you. You may ask yourself these questions: What do people need?
What products and services are available in the market today? Can they be improved? How
are they made or delivered? Can things be done better? cheaper? faster? cleaner? Can a
product which is used for a specific purpose be also used for some other purposes?
You slowly find answers to these questions as you decide to do the first step in launching a
business enterprise. Be cautious however, that you should develop a habit of identifying
opportunities around you. Only then will you find the activity both exciting and easy.
EXPLORE your Understanding
Essential Question
- How does one select an entrepreneurial activity?
Content Standard
- The learner demonstrates understanding of environment and market that relates with the
career choice.
Performance Standard
- The learner formulates a business idea based on the analysis of the environment and
market
Guide Questions:
1. How does one determine the product to be produced or services to be offered and
delivered to the target market or customers in a particular community?
2. How does one select an entrepreneurial activity?
3. How can one respond effectively to a business enterprise?
Hello there! Are you ready to assess your readiness to generate potential business ideas?
Lets try by answering the succeeding pre-assessment.

Lesson 1: Needs and Wants of People

Everyone has his or her own needs and wants. However, people have different concepts of
needs and wants. Needs in business are important things that every individual cannot do
without in a society. These include:
1. Basic commodities for consumption
2. Clothing and other personal belongings
3. Shelter, sanitation, and health
4. Education and relaxation

Basic needs are essential to every individual so he/she may be able to live with dignity and
pride in the community of people. These needs can obviously help you generate business
ideas.
Wants are desires, luxury, and extravagance that signify wealth and an expensive way of
living. Wants or desires are considered above all the basic necessities of life. Some
examples are the eagerness or the passion of every individual which are non- basic needs
like: fashion accessories, shoes, clothes; travelling around the world; eating in an exclusive
restaurant; watching movies, concerts, plays; having luxurious cars; wearing expensive
jewelry, perfume; living in impressive homes; and others.
Needs and wants of people are the basic indicators of the kind of business that you may
engage in because it can serve as the measure of your success. Some other good points
that you might consider in business undertakings are the kind of people, their needs, wants,
lifestyle, culture and tradition, and social orientation that they have.
Lesson 2: Generating Ideas for Business
Here are some ways by which you may generate possible ideas for business.
1. Examine the existing goods and services. Are you satisfied with the product? What do
other people who use the product say about it? How can it be improved? There are many
ways of improving a product from the way it is made to the way it is packed and sold? You
can also improve the materials used in crafting the product. In addition, you introduce new
ways of using the product, making it more useful and adaptable to the customers many
needs. When you are improving the product or enhancing it, you are making an innovation.
You can also make an invention by introducing an entirely new product to replace the old
one.
Business ideas may also be generated by examining what goods and services are sold
outside by the community. Very often, these products are sold in a form that can still be
enhanced or improved.
2. Examine the present and future needs. Look at and listen to what the customers,
institution, and communities are missing in terms of goods and services. Sometimes, these
needs are already obvious and felt at the moment. Other needs are not that obvious
because they can only be felt in the future, in the event of certain developments in the
community. For example, a town will have its electrification facility in the next six months.
Only by that time will the entrepreneur think of electrically- powered or generated business
such as a photocopier, computer service, digital printing, etc.
3. Examine how the needs are being satisfied. Needs for the products and services are
referred to as market demand. To satisfy these needs is to supply the products and services
that meet the demands of the market. The term market refers to whoever will use or buy the
products or service, and these may be people or institutions such as other businesses,
establishments, organizations, or government agencies.
There is a very good business opportunity when there is absolutely no supply to a pressing
market demand.
Businesses or industries in the locality also have needs for goods and services. Their needs
for raw materials, maintenance, and other services such as selling and distribution are good
sources of ideas for business.
4. Examine the available resources around you. Observe what materials or skills are
available in abundance in your area. A business can be started out of available raw

materials by selling them in raw form and by processing and manufacturing them into
finished products. For example, in a copra-producing town, there will be many coconut
husks and shells available as waste products. These can be collected and made into coco
rags/doormat and charcoal bricks and sold profitably outside the community.
A group of people in your neighborhood may have some special skills that can be
harnessed for business. For example, women in the Mountain Province possess loom
weaving skills that have been passed on from one generation to the next generation. Some
communities there set up weaving businesses to produce blankets, as well as decorative
items and various souvenir items for sale to tourists and lowland communities.
Business ideas can come from your own skills. The work and experience you may have in
agricultural arts, industrial arts, home economics, and ICT classes will provide you with
business opportunities to acquire the needed skills which will earn for you extra income,
should you decide to engage in income-generating activities. With your skills, you may also
tinker around with various things in your spare time. Many products were invented this way.
5. Read magazines, news articles, and other publications on new products and
techniques or advances in technology. You can pick up new business ideas from
Newsweek, Readers Digest, Business Magazines, Go Negosyo, KAB materials, Smallindustry Journal. The Internet serves as a library where you may browse and surf on
possible businesses. It will also guide you on how to put the right product in the right place,
at the right price, at the right time.
Listing of possible businesses to set up in an area may also be available from banks or local
non-government organizations.
Lesson 3: Selecting the Right Idea
Once you have embarked on identifying the business opportunities, you will eventually see
that there are many possibilities that are available for you. It is very unlikely that you will
have enough resources to pursue all of them at once. Which one will you choose?
You have to select the most promising one from amonga hundred and one ideas. It will be
good to do this in stages. In the first stage, you screen your ideas to narrow them down to
about five choices. In the next stage, trim down the five choices to two options. In the final
stage, choose between the two and decide which business idea worth pursuing.
In screening your ideas, examine each one in terms of the following factors:
1. How much capital is needed to put up the business?
2. How big is the demand for the product? Do many people need this product and will
continue to need it for a long time?
3. How is the demand met? Who are processing the products to meet the need (competition
or demand)? How much of the need is now being met (supply)?
4. Do you have the background and experience needed to run this particular business?
5. Will the business be legal, not going against any existing or foreseeable government
regulation?
6. Is the business in line with your interest and expertise?
Your answers to these questions will be helpful in screening which ones from among your
many ideas are worth examining further and worth pursuing.
Lesson 4: Environmental Scanning
There is a need to conduct environmental scanning to identify the needs and wants of
people, the niche for your business mission, and to give attention to trends and issues. This

may also serve as an evaluation of the type of the entrepreneurial activity appropriate in the
community.
Environmental scanning is defined as a process of gathering, analyzing, and dispensing
information for tactical or strategic purposes. The environmental scanning process entails
obtaining both factual and subjective information on the business environments in which a
company is operating.
External Environment in the community can be viewed according to its technological,
political, legal, environmental, economic, and social aspects. For example, in the past,
people in the community used personal computers but the transmission of development in
terms of technology was interrupted because people were not satisfied with what they had.
They still look for the changes in their life and corresponding changes in their environment.
As a future entrepreneur, you must be well-versed in this kind of advancement and
progression of your environment, particularly in technology, so as to secure the success of
your future business. Always think of something new, something novel, authentic; reinvent
the existing ones; and create your new version of goods/products, and services. For
instance, your own hair straightening is herbal, while in the other salons it is made of
synthetic chemicals. This kind of changes being made will affect the existing principles in
business and industries that can be easily adapted to the changes in producing the
products/services to meet the needs and wants of people in the community.
In generating business idea, you should first identify what type of business is suited to your
business idea. You should analyze and scan the potential environment, study the marketing
practices and strategies of your competitors, analyze the Strengths, Weaknesses,
Opportunities, and the Threats in your environment to ensure that the products/goods and
services you are planning to offer will be patronized within the easy reach by your target
markets/consumers.
Bear in mind these simple rules for successful SWOT analysis.
1. Be realistic about the strengths and weaknesses of your business when conducting
SWOT analysis.
2. SWOT analysis should distinguish between where your business is today, and where it
could be in how far in the future.
3. SWOT should always be specific. Avoid grey areas.
4. Always apply SWOT in relation to your competition, i.e., better than or worse than your
competition.
5. Keep your SWOT short and simple. Avoid complexity and over analysis
6. SWOT is subjective.
People keep on searching for new things, new trends, and new issues. For these reasons,
an entrepreneur hurriedly responds to these needs and wants of people.
As generations come and go, another set of new trends will come or will exist. In order to
adapt to the rapid changes in the business environment, the existing industries need to
improve their products and services. But how can you generate business ideas with those
strong competitors? There are three 25

main sets of decisions that you need to make-what to produce, how to produce, and how to
share or sell out the product to the market.
Activity 1MiniPopulation
Needs
Wants
survey Age
Bracket
Example:
35
Toys, coloring
Wooden toys,
5 and below
books, pajamas
glossy coloring
books, etc.
fashionable
pajamas
6- 10 years old
11-15 years old
16-20 years old
21-25 years old
26-35 years old
35-45 years old
46-55 years old
56-65 years old
66 and above