Next year the U.S. Entrepreneurship Certification Exam (USECE) will be the certification exam that all students in this course will take. As I told y'all in class, I decided not to give it this year since this is my first time teaching the class. I do have vouchers for all of you, and we have three brave volunteers, Jeidy, Molly and Madie, who will take it this year. If any of you want to join them, please let me know!

We are already doing a lot of what we will need to do to prepare for the USECE. On page 10 of the study guide, it lists the following items:

Explain the concept and importance of marketing research.

• collection of information about the industry, competitors, consumers, existing products and services
• descriptive, exploratory, or causal
• primary and secondary data
• used in planning a business and in continuous improvement of a business
• lean startup methodology suggests that research includes talking to customers and iterating a business based on feedback

Use research to analyze an industry.

Secondary data (i.e., industry analysis) related to background data and future trends of a specified industry including

• competition
• growth potential
• technology
• suppliers
• common challenges

Conduct primary and secondary market research for a business.

• definition of primary data (e.g., survey, observation, focus group)
• steps in conducting primary market research
  • determining data needed to inform business practices
  • creating questions for a market survey
  • developing a market survey
  • having the market survey completed by prospective customers
  • analyzing survey data to make informed business decisions
• definition of secondary data (e.g., government reports, annual business reports from other companies)
• examples of conducting secondary market research
  • reading a trade journal to identify ways of using technology to make customer transactions more convenient
  • analyzing government reports to understand business statistics and industry trends

Identify business opportunities in school or the community.

• conduct market research using primary data and/or secondary data to determine school or community problems that an entrepreneur could solve

These goals align closely with what we are doing in this childcare project, and even suggest next steps for us to discuss with Sara and Bella today.

Finally, last week I promised to send Sara and Bella a link to the GIS study I did as a grad student at GMU. Here it is:

• Explorations in Free Software GIS

Please read A Shared Services Cooperative for Childcare Workers from Introduction on page 4 through the end of The Proposal: A Shared Services Cooperative on page 10. Come to class on Monday ready to answer a spot questions on this reading.