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Wednesday 11 November 2015

Generating new business ideas

Here's the thing about business ideas: there is limitless potential.

Let's start with imagining the simple act of drinking a glass of water.

Is it really simple?

Nope. In order to perform the action 'drink a glass of water', you need:

1: A glass
2: Water
3: A table for the glass of water to rest on
4: The knowledge over how to drink water
5: A functioning water-supply and purification system
6: A functioning mind that enables you to judge the distance to the water, reach out and grab the glass, raise it to your lips, and successfully swallow the water.
7: A desire to drink water, instilled by some clever water-centred marketing

... and you can keep drilling down into finer and finer detail.

The thing I've realised about business ideas that pretty much everything has value, and you can combine any of the wonderful nouns in our world with any of the other delightful verbs, and you end up with a magical product. Creation is actually the easy part - the hardest part is selling.

Ok, so that's not news to anybody, but what I'm currently finding really interesting is starting with basic concepts and then poking around the periphery (e.g. starting with 'glass' and 'water' and ending up at 'home-based training videos on strengthening hand-eye coordination for ultimate water-drinking pleasure') for related concepts.

Of course, insanity lies down that road, because there's the aforementioned infinite number of combinations, and the world's marketplaces don't need more noise.

The trick then is to apply the same fuzzy principle to identify new *markets* that nobody else is targeting (so at least you start off the base that whatever you create will definitely sell), and then re-use that skill to provide your new market with a new product they really want (even if they weren't aware of it until you showed them).

Good luck!