I searched the internet and I noticed that this is a topic which is rarely talked about. Even though this seems like a simple task, I think most people struggle with this. What are the main ways people think of business ideas when they are purposely trying to think of ideas?
Does it primarily involve listing problems and frustrations that they know of and then targeting the ones they have the most capacity to solve? How about actively searching for weaknesses of products, services, and businesses and then starting their own businesses which address these weaknesses?
Which method worked for you in the past when thinking of business ideas?
I have come up with my best product/business ideas when I run across a problem and I can’t find a suitable solution to it. Whether I have the capability to solve the problem doesn’t really factor in. Often times someone has already solved the problem and I’m just not aware of their solution, or their solution is good but not suitable for me for some reason. I am pretty good at coming up with ideas for a business that turn out to be a service, but getting from an idea to actually starting a company isn’t that easy.
I live in the Rocky Mountains and I wanted to buy a hiking stick that was just the right size and just the right weight for the trails I like to hike on. I went to the store and found all kinds of adjustable metal hiking sticks, but I wanted something made from a natural material, such as wood.
I eventually found some commercially made wooden hiking sticks, but they were all the same size, shape and weight. What I really wanted was a custom wooden hiking stick to my specifications.
I eventually learned how to make hiking sticks (it’s not very hard) and I now sell them at local art fairs in my area. Someone can pick out the stick they want and I will customize it by adding a wrist strap, hand grip and bear bell exactly where they want it.
I haven’t found anyone else doing this in my area. It’s not a million dollar idea, but it came about from a need I had that wasn’t being met by anyone else.
I’d say any business idea will come from one of three things:
Considering the future of the world.
Reading about up-coming technologies.
Remembering any time you were annoyed by something, bored, or otherwise not thrilled. Then trying to think of a way to solve that.
#3 will probably result in the most, and the most feasible, business ideas.
But probably harder than coming up with ideas is doing the research to figure out how much it would cost to start the business, run it, and whether the idea is good enough to take off and make a profit. The majority of ideas, you’ll have to throw away.
True entrepreneurs have the innate ability to see a need and then fill it by convincing others to invest their hard earned money. I’ve known a few, and they will all tell you that ideas are a dime a dozen. The hard part is convincing someone else it’s worth investing in so that the risk can be spread around…
Personally, I have come up with a number of business ideas over the years based on the needs of the Department of Defense/military, which they put out several times a year through their Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. Indeed, there is a SBIR cycle going on as I write this. Generally, the topic descriptions themselves will often tell you (or have reference to other articles) that will detail the enormous potential of the solution and suggest the technologies that could likely solve it, but these are often high tech/cutting edge ideas. Still, I have taken ideas that the military wanted and thought of new and unusual commercial applications for them as well.
As Sage Rat already suggested, think about all the products and services you’ve had in your life that sucked. In some cases, you may have even had to manufacture your own solutions because the existing solution was so awful or a huge time waster it wasn’t worth buying the product. Much like the gold rush of the 1840s, however, you are always better off being the facilitator than the inventor. That is, the guys who made money in the gold rush were the ones who sold the miners the tools, clothes, and supplies they needed, while only a handful of them actually struck it rich.
Likewise, you might be better off offering a service rather than a product per say. For example, 3-D printers are one of the big emerging technologies right now, but people are still mostly using them to make dumb plastic toys and for novelty applications. That said, how many products are there out there that are no longer supported by the manufacturer such that when a part breaks, you can’t get another one, unless you find someone who has scavenged one from another existing unit, like at a junkyard. I would bet that with a bit of research, you could find some common product that easily breaks and is no longer supported, such that you could market replacement parts via a 3-D printer service to that market.
I grew up in Silicon Valley, and someone who simply opened up a McDonald’s was not considered an entrepreneur. They are just good business people or maybe franchisees. Ray Kroc was the entrepreneur. He took a small local business and grew it into a Fortune 500 company.
I think you made excellent points. Acting as a supplier of tangible products, services, and/or knowledge to people who are trying to achieve specific goals should always be considered.
When it comes to the most **creative **ideas, would you say that these following approaches are the most ideal?:
Finding new uses for existing products and services (this may often involve altering the product or service in some way)
Combining existing products and services to create something new
Look at a process that’s working in one area. Then ask yourself if an analogous process could be applied to other areas.
Henry Ford never claimed to have invented the assembly line. He saw the process being used in slaughterhouses and then came up with the idea of applying the same basic process to building automobiles.
There are systematic methods that you can use to generate new ideas - I commonly use some of these:
Insert a significant constraint into a familiar process - You are a business that makes and sells sandwiches, but no bread of any kind is available - how are you going to keep trading?
Randomly replace a major component or ingredient - What would it be like if popular snacks were made from meat instead of chocolate?
Or randomise everything - I made these invention dice - you still need imagination and creativity to use any of these methods, but in my experience, it’s the starting point or inspiration that’s always the hardest part - once you have some parameters, brainstorming solutions is fairly simple.
Listen out for absolute terms in any statement and challenge yourself to find an exception - i.e. “**All **pets require commitment”, “Learning is always hard”, “We will **never **need more than X number of [whatever]”, “**Nobody **will ever want [some thing]”, etc
The “invention dice” seems quite intriguing actually. It’s been said that most inventions are usually the combination of components of previous inventions. Additionally, most of the newer innovations from Apple seem to be the combination of modern technologies.
Its probably really hard to invent something that is completely and totally novel - not because everything has been invented, but because useful things need a context, and modern life has set some pretty firmly established contexts. You can of course challnge those contexts as a part of the creativity process, but challenging them all at once will probably result in output that nobody needs or wants.