For our project, we explored the growth of the ASU BioDesign Clinical Testing Laboratory (ABCTL) from a standard university research lab to a COVID-19 testing facility through a business lens. The lab has pioneered the saliva-test in the Western United States. This thesis analyzes the laboratory from various business concepts and aspects. The business agility of the lab and it’s quickness to innovation has allowed the lab to enjoy great success. Looking into the future, the laboratory has a promising future and will need to answer many questions to remain the premier COVID-19 testing institution in Arizona.

For our project, we explored the growth of the ASU BioDesign Clinical Testing Laboratory (ABCTL) from a standard university research lab to a COVID-19 testing facility through a business lens. The lab has pioneered the saliva-test in the Western United States. This thesis analyzes the laboratory from various business concepts and aspects. The business agility of the lab and it’s quickness to innovation has allowed the lab to enjoy great success. Looking into the future, the laboratory has a promising future and will need to answer many questions to remain the premier COVID-19 testing institution in Arizona.

In the 21st century economy, life moves pretty fast, and change is happening all around us. For example, it was common to drive to shopping malls with your friends or family and spend the whole afternoon browsing through hundreds of items until you found the perfect purchase. Or, only a few months ago, the entire world was put on lockdown to stop the spread of COVID-19, which caused a recession when consumers stopped spending as much to start saving. Americans also used to enjoy their loud, gas-guzzling cars and trucks to get them from place to place. Now what changed, and why? The study of economics justifies how we, as human, fundamentally live and make choices every day. As we notice the results of our choices, we may continue to do the same the next day, temporarily go another route, or alter our behavior permanently. This framework presents the concept of innovation. By applying this logic to the business world, I will attempt to analyze and defend why the innovations of e-commerce, COVID-19 vaccines, and electric vehicles were the natural cause of society changing perspective to move forward toward a better tomorrow.

In this paper, I have designed a business model for a new type of fashion retail
store. This store will perfect the personal styling experience by utilizing customer and
apparel data to make individualized apparel recommendations. The format of this store
will heavily reduce the amount of search time for customers by only showing clothing
pieces that each person is likely to purchase, based on predictive analytics. In order to
plan this business model and determine whether a company of this style could be
successful, this paper includes research on the current environment of the fashion
industry, the company’s potential target market segmentation, and tactics for developing
the best customer offering.

The way that people consume media is changing. While every platform seems to shift to video, there is a not-so-quiet revolution going on in the podcast industry. Each week, 10,000 new podcasts are created and uploaded and this number continues to grow (Moore, 2018). As the prevalence of smartphones, faster download speeds, and streaming platforms have proliferated across the globe, more and more people are turning to podcasts to get their content fix. Young professionals are especially drawn to the format because it fits perfectly into their busy lifestyles. This thesis explored how to create, produce, and market a podcast to college students and entry level workers that are interested in pursuing a career in advertising. We collected data through conducting depth interviews and an online survey to podcast listeners as well marketing and design students. The insights drawn from this research were combined with a thorough trend analysis of the podcast market to find the factors that matter most to the target consumer. From there we produced eight episodes of the podcast and released them over a timespan of two and a half months. Finally, paid social media advertisements were used to target students at major advertising colleges around the country. The results of this thesis found that there are a number of important takeaways from the process that can help anyone build a podcast brand, audience and media strategy. Our research found that prospective podcasters should: maintain a consistent upload schedule, invest in audio quality, experiment with content strategy, know their target audience, own your show’s brand, and not rely on just one audio streaming platform.

A market analysis on the boutique fitness industry, as well as financial plans and logistical planning of creating a unique indoor cycling studio in the greater Scottsdale area. Through competitive, financial, and technological analyses one is able to better understand the breadth and scope of the growing fitness industry as well as see the potential risks and benefits in opening a small business in this arena.
Health and wellness can be found all throughout the market nowadays. Whether it be from the food people eat or the money people spend on self-care, this trend has created a significant niche in today’s market. Create Cycle is the next big player to be stepping into the mayhem that is the health and wellness industry. Create Cycle is a new indoor cycling experience located in Scottsdale, Arizona. Its mission: to provide people with an unforgettably positive fitness experience where each and every person feels empowered to create love for themselves through state-of-the-art technology. With the fitness industry is quickly growing, and it is imperative for Create Cycle to differentiate itself within the Scottsdale market. Create Cycle will be, in theory, based around an entire experience. The classes will consist of some of the best talent and training one can find in the valley. This will be done through a specific hiring process and strategic organizational structure. The goal is to let experiences in class lead to a strong community following, where Create Cycle becomes the place to be. Its vision: to one day break down the notions of exercising solely for physical appearance but rather for one’s own happiness and for those around them in a larger frame of mind.

This thesis examines the applications of the Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence within small-to-medium sized retail businesses. These technologies have become a common aspect of a modern business environment, yet there remains a level of unfamiliarity with these concepts for business owners to fully utilize these tools. The complexity behind IoT and AI has been simplified to provide benefits for a brick and mortar business store in regards to security, logistics, profit optimization, operations, and analytics. While these technologies can contribute to a business’s success, they potentially come with a high and unattainable financial cost. In order to investigate which aspects of businesses can benefit the most from these technologies, interviews with small-to-medium business owners were conducted and paired with an analysis of published research. These interviews provided specific pain points and issues that could potentially be solved by these technologies. The analysis conducted in this thesis gives a detailed summary of this research and provides a business model for two small businesses to optimize their Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence to solve these pain points, while staying in their financial budget.

Over 50% of the US population has listened to a podcast as of 2019. That is over 144 million people in the US alone that can potentially generate revenue for a podcast host. In 2017, podcast advertising secured revenues of $314 million. It is expected to grow to $659 million by 2020 (Goldberg). There is a growing market of active podcast listeners for advertisers to tap into. There is so much potential in podcasting that Spotify has recently decided that they are willing to spend $400-500 million on this category alone in 2019. In that large figure they have acquired “Gimlet”, a podcasting company, for 230 million and “Anchor”, a creation/distribution platform (Heater).
These massive amounts of investment in podcasting is assuring for the podcast industry that began as recently as the early 2000’s. There is money to be made for the content creators of podcasts as well. This paper focuses on how podcast hosts can generate the most amount of money. The two forms of producing income is by paid advertisements or donations/crowdfunding. I conducted an experiment using my own podcast to test whether paid advertisements or donations were more effective at making money. My hypothesis for this experiment is if I offer a free podcast for the public to listen to and ask for donations then I think less than 10% of listeners will donate. I believe that paid advertisements will generate more revenue than donations because I believe podcast listeners are not generous enough to donate. My research on how to make the most money podcasting is illustrated in the following pages.

Innovation Space is Arizona State University’s capstone style project in which upper division students gain real experience in the startup and product development world by solving real-world problems. These problems were presented to my team by sponsor; LG Electronics. Innovation Space uniquely offered an interdisciplinary glance into “real life” in the months before college graduation. Students are placed on teams with designers, engineers, sustainability majors, and business majors to better reflect the real world. As a business student of this program, I was able to gain and share knowledge from my teammates’ distinct backgrounds; as well as gain the interdisciplinary experience that is key to a college education, specifically to a business student. LG Electronics, our sponsor, brought our team the task of expanding their product line in their “wind comfort” business unit. LG Electronics has created a lighter, more efficient motor for a fan; likely as an answer to their dominating fan competitor, Dyson. LG Electronics wanted to see what our team could do to alter the way people cool their homes, and we responded with three original ideas: a modular, non-centralized A/C unit; a hands-free hair dryer; and a portable 360 degree fan. Our team developed the latter product, and named it Torus. The product was developed over the course of August 2018 to May 2019, ending in a working prototype formally presented to the sponsor and industry professionals. On top of this project, I was directed to also analyze the Innovation Space program for its benefits and drawbacks to a business degree from the W.P. Carey School of Business.

I'm a business major. As a matter of fact, I don't have a lot of opportunities to participate in projects where I can design and build things as my engineering friends do. In fact, I'm not good at building things. And perhaps that's why I soon figured out that Engineering school isn't for me. But business alone seems to be not enough; I crave for something new and exciting and there is nothing more satisfying than seeing a design on paper becoming a tangible product in hands. For that reason, I decided to join InnovationSpace after learning about the program from my professor and my friends who were in the program. My goal through the program is to deliver a product that people find useful, and hopefully, has an impact on their lives.

“InnovationSpace is an entrepreneurial joint venture among the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, W.P. Carey School of Business and the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University. The goal […] is to develop products that create market value while serving real societal needs and minimizing impacts on the environment. Put simply, we seek to create products that are progressive, possible and profitable. At the same time, they must have a meaningful impact on the daily lives of ordinary people. InnovationSpace utilizes two fundamental strategies for creating sustainable innovation: a model of new product development known as Integrated Innovation and the emerging field of biomimicry.” — InnovationSpace program syllabus

The focus of the project outlined by Cisco is “to understand the needs of people who face physical, cognitive or sensory disabilities, and develop new products and services for them utilizing the potential of the new technologies called the Internet of Things.” In other words, I am challenged to leverage the Internet of Things technologies to develop a device that benefits individuals with disabilities.
 
The final product is an automated airport cart — Chariot. Based on stakeholders’ needs interviews, we find that visually impaired people experience difficulties navigating the airport when they need to travel. Many airports attempt to solve this problem by offering wheelchair. However, visually impaired people feel that they are treated unfairly and become dependent on the wheelchairs. Chariot strives to solve this problem by applying the same concept in autonomous vehicle to guide the users through the airport. The users receive their itinerary email that will link to the Chariot app on their phones. When they arrive at the airport, the users simply connect their phones with Chariot and information such as gate number and departure time will be updated in the cart so that Chariot can guide the users to the desired destination. Ultimately, Chariot aims to give visually impaired people more control over their lives.