Generating Product, Service and Business Ideas

Generating product, service and business ideas

While the purpose of innovation is “simply” to create business value (simply is in quotes because it’s obviously not so easy to do), the value itself can take many different forms.It can be incremental improvements to existing products, the creation of breakthroughs such as entirely new products and services, cost reductions, efficiency improvements, new business models, new ventures, and countless other forms as well.

The method of creating innovation is to discover, create, and develop ideas, to refine them into useful forms, and to use them to earn profits, increase efficiency, and/or reduce costs.

In the quest for innovation it’s obvious that many ideas at the input stage become a few completed, useful innovations at the output stage, so people readily visualize the innovation process as a funnel: lots of ideas come in the wide end on the left, and a few finished innovations come to market from the narrow end at the right. The trick to making it work is knowing what’s supposed happen inside the funnel.

Ideas are the seeds of innovation, just as ore taken from the ground is the raw material of steel, or wheat provides the raw material for bread. But it takes a lot of work to mine the raw ore and transform it into steel, or to prepare the fields to grow the wheat long before it becomes bread.So we have to start the idea generation and innovation process itself with strategic thinking to assure that the outputs of innovation are fully aligned with our strategic intent.

Step 1 is therefore Strategic Thinking. The innovation process begins with the goal to create strategic advantage in the marketplace, so in this stage we think specifically about how innovation is going to add value to your strategic intents, and we target the areas where innovation has the greatest potential to provide strategic advantage.Utilising Jim Collin’s Hedgehog concept (illustrated below) is helpful in driving the strategic thinking within the innovation process.

Step 2 is the Unitec Entrepreneurial Framework.We are by definition trying to do something new, and as we proceed on the innovation journey we do not in fact know if we are going to succeed. We have confidence that we’ll succeed eventually, but along the way we know that there will be many wrong turns, and many attempts that will never come to fruition. So we manage the innovation process by utilizing the three phases of the Unitec Entrepreneurial Framework – Idea Validation, Idea Development and Idea Commercialisation.

Thus the idea generation process is a cycle illustrated by the below diagram:

Approaches to Generating Ideas

If you've already spent time building up skills and contacts in a certain industry, or you have specialist knowledge about an industry, it's natural to use expertise you've already developed in your own business. You may have hated working for a PR company - but why? Was it the job, or was it something the company was doing? Could you do it differently?
Attempt some crystal ball gazing. Ask yourself what the world will look like this time next year. What about in five years' time? Use industry media and read experts' blogs to second-guess the future and try to develop ideas in line with trends so you can develop a product or service and cash in when they happen.
Bounce ideas off friends. Create a collective with a group of like-minded people to help you come up with ideas, then share the profits when an idea makes money. Don't be too concerned with giving ideas away at this stage - unless someone is passionate about an idea, it's unlikely they'll follow it through.
Ideas tend to occur in the least convenient places, so keep a pen and paper with you all the time. It's also worth noting that just before you fall asleep and just after you wake up, your brain tends to be at its most creative - so make sure you have something to write with on your bed-side table.
Don't be afraid to look at other people's ideas for inspiration. There's nothing wrong with copying someone else's idea (unless, of course, it's protected by copyright law), as long as your business does something to distinguish itself by building and improving on that idea.
Hundreds of good business ideas have come when their creators have looked for a solution to an everyday problem. You only need to look at You Tube to see how many of life's little problems can be solved fairly easily - and ingeniously.
Sometimes, the best way to get creative is to allow your mind to wander. Use a technique such as mind-mapping or play a word-association game with yourself to come up with ideas. One technique people frequently use is to take two nouns and stick them together. ScreenPhone? TreeTower? ChimneyTent? Could these be viable business ideas?
If you're having difficulties coming up with an idea, take a break. Go for a walk, watch television or browse the internet. The great thing about this stage of starting a business is everything you do could provide you with inspiration - so you're constantly working.
While creativity and optimism are great at this stage, make sure you know your limits. If you trained as an accountant, developing an interest in arborology is good but you won't be able to run a business as a tree surgeon after you've read one book about it. Take into account your experience and qualifications - and if you're really enthusiastic about your idea, get some training.
Come up with a goal for yourself and work backwards from that. What do you want to achieve with your business? Do you want to make money, or spend more time with yourchildren? What businesses will help you achieve that goal fastest?

50 places to find inspiration

Social media - people are forever complaining about life's problems on Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, YouTube...
Read magazines
Read newspapers
Improve on other people's ideas
Go for a long drive
Read product catalogues –they have the potential to be deeply inspiring
Go to the supermarket and browse the shelves
Read ideas blogs
Listen to the Radio –some stations haveprogrammes about unusual businesses or pursuits
Go to the toilet!
Speak to children
Get your pens and paper out and draw a mind map
Have a conversation with a stranger
Go on an unusual journey or use a bus or train you wouldn't usually use
Visit a museum
Read the user comments on a blog post or online newspaper article
Switch off your computer and just think
Go to a demonstration
Visit your local library
Check business incubators for case studies
Watch television
Get lost in Google - read blogs and look at pictures and follow long, random link paths
Get lost on Flickr
Read comic books
Read or watch sci-fi - did you know the inventor of the phone card was inspired by Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey?
Visit another city on Google's Street View- do they have anything we don't?
Trigger memories by reading old letters and emails
Create a discussion group on an internet forums
Attend networking events
Open a dictionary or thesaurus at a random page
Visit tourist attractions in your own city
Go to a trade show or exhibition
Go to a seminar
Take an evening course
Set limits - try to come up with an idea which doesn't use artificial products, create a carbon footprint or use orange dye. You'll be surprised how creative it makes you
Go to a flea market
Go to anauction
Contact old friends and family you've lost touch with
Combine weird ingredients - chilli chocolate may have seemed strange two years ago, but it's popular now
Go through old photographs
Watch a play
Visit a university's website or even take a walk around its campus. What are the students there talking about?
Learn a new skill
Do some volunteer work - what would make a charity worker's life easier?
Wander around a city at night (safely, of course!)
Go on holiday
Collect something
Perform a random search on Wikipedia
Make a list of things you use every day and think about how you could improve on them
See what the kids are saying at urban dictionary

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