Finding Business Ideas: 4 Strategies

Enrique Bay -

We introduced ideas and what they represent. But coming up with them is a whole other matter. In this post, we'll discuss a few strategies to find ideas.

1. Problems

This is by far the most significant reason ideas, and businesses exist. Ideas come from problems we face on a day to day. From man's need for heat or light and, thus, coming up with ways to start a fire... to designing an incandescent bulb for lighting a home, man has faced problems since the beginning of time, and our brains have evolved with the need to find solutions for them.

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Open a Note on your phone and title it "Ideas." Every time you have a problem, think of a simple solution. No matter how vague, write a line about it.

As consumers, we often start using a product or service way before others. In business lingo, we are part of the Innovators or Early Adopters.

https://www.chameleon.io/blog/product-adoption-curve

Think of people buying Sony's Clies (predecessor to the iPhone), who booked a ride on Virgin Galactic's first space trips, or who bought Tesla's first car, the Roadster. Those were Innovators.

Then there are other services like Netflix and Spotify. As many of you reading, I was an Early Adopter of those. Airbnb is another example, where not only did the platform enable anyone to open a room or their home for rent, but it also sparked many other services like rental managers, furniture designers, and others. We may not realize it, but if we are part of the early adopters of any of these trends, we may have thought of many ideas to attend to the needs of the newly created markets.

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Follow blogs, podcasts, and newsletters in the markets or topics you are interested in. Hearing about all the new innovations in said topics will spark even more creativity and ideas.

3. Research and Feedback

This could involve conducting market research, surveying potential customers, and seeking feedback from industry experts. In this case, one must start thinking of an industry or a market and gain insights into the needs and wants of a target audience. Once research gets going, you can identify gaps in the market and develop ideas that meet those needs. By filling these gaps, you can create a unique and valuable product or service that stands out in the market.

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Set up interview meetings with someone working for a company or part of a market you are interested in. Once you hear their perspective, your own will change, and new ideas will start coming to your head.

4. Brainstorming

Brainstorming is a powerful tool for generating new ideas. This could involve a few sessions with friends or engaging in free-form thinking by yourself.

In this regard, quantity is more important than the quality of ideas. By generating many of them, you can mix, match and refine them at one point.

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Use post-its and set a time limit to develop many ideas regarding a topic or with one or two constraints. Once finished, put them on a wall and try to group them according to similarities.

Final Thoughts

Ideas are a commodity; they are something we all come up with all the time. The problem is that they are usually an afterthought and, for worse, they become lost in the ether. For ideas to become useful, it's important to document them. That is an even more critical topic we'll discuss in a future post.