DECA Crash Course Week 5: Defining the Three Main Problems

Hey everyone! Welcome back to Week 5 of this crash course. Today I'm moving on to an exciting part of your DECA journey - writing your written report! This post is geared toward entrepreneurship events, but I believe the underlying messages hold true regardless of whichever event you've chosen. Let's get started!

Week 5: Defining the 3 problems

Me, geeking out over starting my report. Source.

Defining the 3 Main Problems

As I said in numerous earlier posts, there has to be a reason why you're choosing to create the company you want. It has to make people's lives easier somehow; DECA's not a competition for purely entertainment businesses or gimmicks. To define what problems your companies solve, consider the following:

• What are problems currently being faced today in the industry? Obviously, do some research. Define the industry. Check the news. What's going on in the world?
• What is lacking in current solutions? What are other companies missing out on? 
• Why has no one been able to solve this problem? And why do you think you can solve it?
• Who faces this issue? Just as you should try to choose a business that the judge can empathize with or connect to in some form, you should try to select problems any judge could connect with to grab their attention. 
• How many people face this issue? Niche markets are fine (to give you an idea, my business sophomore year was geared toward pet bird owners). However, I noticed at ICDC that the businesses there seemed to have more universal appeal, so try to step out of niche markets if you can.
• IMO, avoid using price as a problem. In the real world, if you discover a way to cut prices, you'll be very successful. However, a judge might just wonder that if you could come up with a way to cut prices (paying for less labor, adopting a different marketing strategy, etc.), why haven't real companies already done it? This may lead them to think that you haven't done your research. So, unless your whole business is designed around some patented way to automate processes and you have prototypes and videos to prove that you could launch this system in real life, don't use price as a problem.

Me when people try using price as a problem. Source.

Also, when you finalize your problems, obviously make sure to understand how your company solves them. You wouldn't want to come up with 3 excellent, unsolvable problems, would you?

That moment when you come up with 1243 problems with 0 solutions. Source.

The problem section is graded out of 5 points, so it's worth about as much as any other section. More importantly, the problem section is what your whole company is built upon. Choose three key problems and make sure to refer to them throughout the report. Good luck! If you have any questions (doesn't have to be related to entrepreneurship events), please ask them either in the comments below or on this form here. This series is for all of you, so take the most out of it! And, I'd really appreciate a quick follow if you're enjoying the content (the button's on the bottom for the mobile version and in the sidebar on the PC version). See you next week :).