Ignore the competition. Find a USP and you’re different already.
To quote Alan Kay - “Don’t worry about what anybody else is going to do. The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”
Ideas are commodities. “Don’t worry about the competition”.
“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.” - Mark Twain.
If you’re a person who likes to dream up ideas, you’ll probably be wanting to get feedback from time to time. I choose two parties for sounding boards.
1. Loved ones (family, friends you can trust and who are consistent).
2. Your target customers (whoever it is that’ll get their cheque book out and pay for your idea solution once it’s commercially viable).
Expose yourself to any other sounding boards and the potential is there for you to be either confused, de-motivated, or upset. It’s also difficult to know what someones motivation for advice is. Protect yourself, but in saying that, expose yourself to your target customers… it might hurt at first, but it’ll atleast be beneficial ‘hurt’.
When in ‘idea’ mode, I try and loosely follow the Rules of Brainstorming. The more these rules are followed the better chance there is that something worthwhile creative will come. Why? It’s kinda like that ‘door metaphor’… you need to open one door to gain access to the other doors, no matter how ’silly, strange, irrelevant, or wacky’ the first door might seem as an option, it should, in the end, lead to the door you’re after.
When teaching commerce at Wellington College I can’t remember how many times I had to stress the point during our Young Enterprise workshops [where we'd brainstorm ideas for business ventures based in schools]…. No criticizing or judging others ideas/suggestions during a brainstorm… good or bad. Even myself as the teacher, I had to resist the urge to respond even ‘positively’ while being the brainstorm scribe. “It’s not a discussion or forum”.
I’m not sure what’s harder… the brainstorming itself or the enforcement of the brainstorming rules. Either way, there are some great web 2.0 tools out there to help with the process.
What gets my wheels spinning?
“IDEAS”
I’m going to be writing alot more about my experiences with ideas here. If not simply as a log for me to look back on and possibly notice patterns in relation to idea development. Maybe you can help to tell me what it is you are… doing, thinking, feeling, saying, eating, enjoying, when you come up with your ideas… Good or bad, practical or otherwise.
And as a symbol of this blogs new perspective, i’m changing the css theme to a nice new blue.
Rob Adams, in his book a good hard kick in the ass is refreshing.
” in love with your idea? get over it….”
It’s a good way to think regarding your business. If you’re too in-love with your idea you’ll lose the focus of other important matters.
I suppose different start-up founders focus on different areas of their business. Lets look at 3 things that might make up a company and analyse one of them…
1. Cash $$$
2. Idea
3. Time
Time can often be under-estimated in terms of its importance… time to market, time to get a task done, time to implement an update. Time isn’t money, time is the essence of life.
Or maybe the focus should be energy conservation . I heard about Google’s new initiative today.
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I’ve knowingly failed to include customers as a focus point, assuming that if you’re building something users want, this will take care of them, so it’s part of the idea/product. Also left out, Team. Team will be the ones who execute on building what users want (or not). And so this could be a product/idea sub-category.
