How to come up with great start-up ideas.
When it comes to generating business ideas, Guy Kawasaki talks about making ‘meaning over money’ and Zuckerberg says ‘start with the kind of problem you want to solve’; but how do you actually come up with good business ideas?
Below I’ve pulled together some useful techniques to help you with brainstorming for your next business idea. They look at:
‘Where do I even start?!’
Being creative in generating ideas
Making sure the idea is right for you
Three different places to start when generating ideas:
Find customer groups you love - (you'll be spending a lot of time talking to them so pick a group you like being around)
Think about areas of the industry you hate - (so much that you're passionate about changing them)
Consider technologies or markets that you would like to build social capital in for the long term - (picking a tech or area you’re interested in developing your knowledge and relationships in)
Explore these and search for customer problems that you can solve.
By finding a problem, or pain point, to alleviate you help ensure that there is a reason for a customer to buy from you and that you’re not creating something no one wants.
When you’ve identified an area to look into and some potential problems to solve you’ll want to start getting creative…
Being creative in your idea generation:
Are you on an expedition or a mission?
In 'Creativity Under the Gun', Amabile, Hadley and Kramer explore two ways in which you can harness your creative thought.
If you are working without time pressure, they suggest that you act as though you are on an expedition, exploring different trains of thought and seeing where they go.
However, if you are limited in time, you will be most creative if you act as though on a mission and stay focused on one activity for a significant period of time.
Translating this into something useful for when generating ideas, I normally find it’s best to pick one problem you’re interested in solving (even if you have many) and spend a bit of time coming up with solutions to this, rather than tackling all in one go.
Try this easy idea generation technique:
10 mins - generate initial ideas to solve the one customer problem
5 mins - google five companies you respect and consider to be changing the game in their industry
10 mins - take inspiration from those five companies and build on your initial ideas
The environment
Your environment is also key, in Johnson's TED talk on where good ideas come from, he speaks about environments with unusual levels of creativity and innovation.
'An idea is a network - a new network of neurons firing in sync with each other in your brain'.
He talks about how these networks of neurons are mimicked in the outside world. So a place that brings together people from lots of backgrounds, with different interests and ideas is a great environment for innovation, and an example would be a coffee shop.
'We like to think our great ideas are state of the art and new, but more often than not they are cobbled together by whatever parts are found nearby'. Chaotic environments where unpredictable collisions take place allow great ideas to fade into view over time. (Johnson)
So set off on your mission in an environment that is likely to spark off new thoughts.
Is the idea you're interested in right for you?
To help decide if the idea is right for you, you could use a technique that Chris Howard suggests every successful startup has thought about in some format, ‘the strategic sandbox’. This sets the founding philosophy and mindset of your business. It comprises of the following three elements:
Your founding mission (describe what is wrong today, who you are helping and why you want to help them)
Your core ability (what can you do that others can't or what you know that others don't)
Your cultural values (are you doing something that you can be proud of? Your code of conduct)
By exploring these three areas carefully, you can ensure that you're working on an idea that you're passionate about, that your skills are suitable for and that you are doing it in a way that you can be proud of.
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So think about the areas you're interested in exploring and why they interest you. Talk to people about their problems, and be creative in generating solutions. Then finally, think about if the ideas are right for you to work on before diving straight in…
Happy brainstorming!
