How
Entrepreneurs Come Up With Great Ideas
Where
do eurekas come from?
At the
heart of any successful business is a great idea. Some seem so simple we wonder
why nobody thought of them before. Others are so revolutionary we wonder how
anybody could've thought of them at all.
But
those great ideas don't come on command. And that leaves lots of would-be
entrepreneurs asking the same question: How did everybody else get inspiration
to strike—and how can we work the same magic?
To find
out, we turned to the experts—the startup mentors who discuss launching
businesses at our Accelerators blog, as well as other investors, advisers and
professors who have seen and heard countless success stories, and entrepreneurs
who have written success stories of their own. They saw inspiration coming from
all sorts of sources—everyday puzzles, driving passions and the subconscious
mind.
Here's what they had to say.
Look at What's Bugging You
Ideas
for startups often begin with a problem that needs to be solved. And they don't
usually come while you're sitting around sipping coffee and contemplating life.
They tend to reveal themselves while you're hard at work on something else.
For
instance, one company of mine, earFeeder, came about because I wanted news on
music I loved and found it hard to get. So I created a service that checks your
computer for the music you have stored there, then feeds you news from the
Internet about those bands, along with ticket deals and other things.
David Cohen
Founder and CEO,
TechStars
***
You're Never Too Old
Mark
Zuckerberg with Facebook, Paul Allen and Bill Gates with Microsoft, Steve
Wozniak and Steve Jobs with Apple -- those success stories lead some people to
think that coming up with big ideas is a young person's game. But the tech
entrepreneurs who rose to early fame and fortune are just the outliers. The
typical entrepreneur is a middle-aged professional who learns about a market
need and starts a company with his own savings.
Research
that my team completed in 2009 determined that the average age of a successful
entrepreneur in high-growth industries such as computers, health care and
aerospace is 40. Twice as many successful entrepreneurs are aged over 50 as
under 25, and twice as many over 60 as under 20.
Vivek Wadhwa
Vice president of
academics and innovation, Singularity University
***
Be Present in Life
Start
your brainstorming with problems that you are personally invested in. Building
a business is hard as hell and takes the kind of relentless dedication that
comes from personal passion.
The
next big question is "How?" Great ideas and innovations come from
executing on your idea in a different way than everybody else is attacking it,
if they're attacking it at all. A great way to do this is to look outside of
your industry to see how others are solving problems. Approaches that they think
are routine might be out of the ordinary for you—and inspire great ideas.
Also,
most businesspeople tend to ignore our creative side until we really need it.
Making sure that your life has a balance of the arts is a great way to stay
engaged creatively.
This
last tip will seem insanely obvious. However, in the world we live in, it's
easier said than done: Simply be present in life.
I'm
sure you can relate to how overconnected we all are. Something as simple as
having a cup of coffee becomes a juggling act of replying to emails and
managing schedules. It's easy to miss a potential piece to your innovation
puzzle when it's right under your nose if you aren't there.
Angela Benton
Founder and CEO, NewME
Accelerator
***
Ideas Are Abundant; Drive Isn't
Perhaps
the greatest factor that determines whether or not an entrepreneur will be
successful isn't the business idea itself, but rather the entrepreneur's
willingness to try (and keep trying) to turn the idea into reality. Great ideas
are abundant, but it's what we decide to do with them that counts.
Samer Kurdi
Chairman of the global
board, Entrepreneurs' Organization
***
Let Your Subconscious Do the Work
When
the mind is occupied with a monotonous task, it can stimulate the subconscious
into a eureka moment. That's what happened to me. The business model for my
company, ClearFit, which provides an easy way for companies to find employees
and predict job fit, hatched in the back of my mind while I was driving 80
miles an hour, not thinking about work at all.
The
subconscious mind runs in the background, silently affecting the outcome of
many thoughts. So, take a break and smell the flowers, because while you're out
doing that, your mind may very well solve the problem that you are trying to
solve or spark a solution to a problem you hadn't considered before.
Ben Baldwin
Co-founder and CEO,
ClearFit
***
Attack Practical Problems
Make a
note whenever you encounter a service or a customer experience that frustrates
you, or wish you had a product that met your needs that you can't find
anywhere. Then ask yourself, is this a problem I could solve? And how much time
and money would it take to test my idea?
That
last point is crucial. As my sage Stanford professor Andy Rachleff encouraged
me, "Make sure you can fail fast and cheaply." In business school, I
had a couple of big ideas. One was improving domestic airline service—which
would have cost millions and taken years. I decided to pursue another
opportunity that was a lot cheaper and would show results faster—a clothing
line called Bonobos.
In the
end, it took me just nine months and $15,000 of startup funds to get a little
traction and market feedback.
Brian Spaly
Founder and CEO, Trunk
Club
***
Head Into the Weird Places
For
entrepreneurs to stretch their brains, they should seek out the unusual.
Watch
and listen to weird stuff. I enjoy watching obscure documentaries and listening
to unusual podcasts. It's thrilling to find cool ideas lurking just a few
clicks away.
Walk in
weird places. I take walks in hidden suburban neighborhoods, department stores,
community colleges. When you're walking with no purpose but walking, you see
things in fresh ways, because you have the luxury of being in the present.
Talk to
weird people. Striking up conversations with people who are different from you
can be powerful. I still remember random conversations with strangers from
decades ago, and how they shaped me.
Victor W. Hwang
Co-founder, CEO and
managing director, T2 Venture Capital
***
Search for a Better Way
As one
goes about their daily life, it is useful if they routinely ask themselves,
"Isn't there a better way?" You would be surprised at how frequently
the answer is, "Yes." Other sources of inspiration for me are
existing products. One should never feel that just because there is a product
out there similar to yours that you can't execute it and market it better.
Liz Lange
Fashion designer
***
Think Big
There
are several factors an entrepreneur should consider when choosing a business
idea or opportunity.
Go big
or go home: There are opportunities to make money by building businesses that
marginally improve on existing products or services, but the real thrill sets
in when the decision is made to go after an enormous idea that seems slightly
crazy.
Make
the world a better place: The best kind of entrepreneur pursues a business that
simplifies or improves the lives of many people. He or she repeatedly asks
"what if" when thinking about how the world works and how the status
quo could be dramatically improved.
Fail
fast: As overall startup costs decline and markets move much more quickly, it
has become easier to test ideas without devastating consequences of failure.
Pivot
quickly: Many of the most successful companies exist in a form that is entirely
different from how they were first envisioned. A successful entrepreneur will
realize when a company is moving in the wrong direction or is missing a much
larger opportunity.
Kevin Colleran
Venture partner, General
Catalyst Partners
***
Taking It to Market
It is
important to look at an idea in two ways: first, to consider the initial
inspiration for the business, and second, the often very different concept that
ends up being executed to create the new company. We typically think of these
ideas as the thing that sets these great entrepreneurs on the path of success.
However, an idea is only that until you do something with it. Great
entrepreneurs also discover the strategies to deliver the new innovative
solution to the market.
Ellen Rudnick
Clinical professor of
entrepreneurship and executive director of the Michael P. Polsky Center for
Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Chicago Booth School of
Business
***
Listen to People Who Know
Entrepreneurs
come up with great ideas in a number of ways. Here are some of the best.
Get
customer feedback: Listen to customers and create products and services that
give them more of what they like and/or remove what they dislike.
Listen
to front-line employees: The workers who manufacture the widgets, interact with
customers and so on see what takes too long to accomplish, what is too
expensive, what causes problems. Talk to those workers, or even do those jobs
yourself.
Reverse
assumptions: Many great entrepreneurs come up with ideas by reversing
assumptions. For example, the old assumption was that a bank needed to have
tellers and branch locations. The ATM concept asked: How can we offer banking
services without having a branch location and tellers?
Dave Lavinsky
Co-founder and president,
Growthink Inc.
***
Get Inspired by History
You
often hear about the pursuit of the new new thing. But I believe entrepreneurs
have a lot to gain by looking into history for inspiration.
In the
mid-'90s, some beer enthusiasts and experts called us heretics for brewing beers
with ingredients outside of the "traditional" water, yeast, hops and
barley. So, I started researching ancient brewing cultures and learned that
long ago, brewers in every corner of the world made beer with whatever was
beautiful and natural and grew beneath the ground they lived on.
We now
make a whole series of Ancient Ales inspired by historic and molecular evidence
found in tombs and dig sites.
Sam Calagione
Founder and president,
Dogfish Head Craft Brewery Inc.
***
Be Prepared to Shift Gears
Entrepreneurs
need to understand two things. For one thing, their first (or second or third)
idea is often not the real opportunity. In fact, it might stink. They have to
be on the lookout for why it stinks and be willing to shift course.
But
they also need to understand that even if their idea has problems, there's
often a good opportunity buried within it. They need to talk to people and
continue tweaking and transforming it. In the process, they encounter setbacks,
rethink their approach, try again and redefine what they're doing.
For all
that, the idea may fail—it's happened to many successful entrepreneurs. But
they weren't deterred by failure. They kept at it and were better positioned to
recognize and shape the next idea into something truly great.
Donna Kelley
Associate professor of
entrepreneurship and Frederic C. Hamilton chair of free enterprise, Babson
College
***
You Can't Rush the Brain
I don't
know where great ideas come from. I am not sure anyone does. I am not even sure
how I come up with my ideas. The brain does its thing, and out pops an idea.
While
you are waiting for the brain to get its act together, do what you can do. Do
the doable. Meet with people, schmooze, have a laugh or two. Build mock-ups and
prototypes. At the very least, collect other people's problems. That's always a
guaranteed doable.
The
deep idea here is that action has a creative aspect distinct from thinking. And
thinking need not come first. Mostly it doesn't.
Saras D. Sarasvathy
Isidore Horween research
associate professor of business administration, University of Virginia's Darden
School of Business
***
What Not to Do
One
thing that isn't a rich vein of entrepreneurship gold: reading a market
forecast from a big-name consulting firm and deciding to create a product to
serve that need.
Guy Kawasaki
Author and former chief
evangelist of Apple
By: The Wall Street Journal