The Search For A Good Idea

Essentially there are only two ways to create business ideas generate your own or develop someone elses.

The second is far more common because virtually every successful business is developed from an earlier business concept. These areas, such as management buy-outs/buy-ins, corporate spin-offs, franchising and buying an existing business are covered in detail in this and future issues.

In terms of generating business ideas, there are three sources of opportunities: advertisements, agents and opportunity spotting or watching out for businesses that you find match your objectives.

When you can find a better way of meeting the needs, of people and/or organisations, then you will almost certainly have a business opportunity.

One common route is the employer as an idea generator: you might duplicate what your employer is doing, such as finding a new market.

Other ways of recognising peoples needs include the complaints department, where you listen to others whinging to see if you can find ways of reducing their problems; asking yourself what do people want?; spotting trends; and identifying market gaps.

There are established thinking techniques, such as visualisation, brainstorming and morphological analysis, that can be used to generate ideas. Visualisation is a technique that has been used successfully by many, including Conrad Hilton of Hilton Hotel fame whose autobiography even has a chapter called You've got to dream. The process is to day-dream to visualise a picture of your own future. Does it include your own company? If so, what is it? Visualisation is useful for determining long-term goals and idea generation and evaluation.

Everyone has heard of brainstorming. When used well it can create large number of ideas. To work well you need between five and 10 people and to have planned the session in advance. Morphological analysis dividing a complex problem into elements can also help generate ideas. As an example one might take skin care products: sun cream, anti-wrinkle and tanning lotion, to suggest just three. The potential market for these might be segmented by age teenage, 20-something and 30-plus.

By combining the two you have nine ideas. Skin tone may be relevant as well. If you have only three skin tones you are up to 27 ideas already.

Finally, there are experts in corporate creativity who can help in idea generation, probably the most well-known of whom is Edward de Bono.

Many businesses have been started as a result of a search process that followed traditional routes, such as improving on existing businesses or a geographical change.

Improving existing businesses can take many forms. You need to ask yourself: Can I do that and do it better? What constitutes better? Suggestions include quality improvements, simplifying the product or service, improving customer appeal, making it more cost effectively, production efficiencies, making it more reliable, better marketing or greater convenience. Another traditional approach is to shift the geographical base of a business.

In conclusion, much of the research into new enterprise creation links greater creativity with the size of the prospective entrepreneurs networks.

The implication of this is that you should, like politicians, go out to the masses. Press the flesh and talk to people.