On Wednesday, February 19, 2025, DifferenceMaker held the second workshop of the series to prepare students for the $50,000 Idea Challenge this semester. The topic addressed was Assessing Opportunities and Value Proposition.

To start off the event, Rist DifferenceMaker Director, Richard Juknavorian opened by providing a brief recap of what occurred during the first workshop session, which highlighted Identifying problems. Then, he introduced the guest presenters for the night, which Included Professor Rae Mansfield, Honors College, and Professor Neil Shortland, College of Fine Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences.

After the introduction, Professor Mansfield emphasized the importance of assessing opportunities before investing time and resources into a product. While our ideas may seem incredibly valuable to us, that doesn’t necessarily mean they will resonate with potential customers. She illustrated this with the example of pickle-flavored toothpaste. This highlights the necessity of market research, which helps determine whether an idea is truly. 

Then, Professor Shortland presented the importance of value propositions. A value proposition demonstrates how a potential solution provides more value than what competitors are currently offering. Students broke out into groups to work on their value propositions on large notepads, then were given the chance to work in a 1-on-1 setting with faculty fellows. 

After which, students were given time to write down their opportunities on the “target market opportunity” and “competition opportunity” worksheets.

Thank you to everyone that joined DifferenceMaker for Workshop 2!