Sometimes we unknowingly come up with innovative business ideas, and other times, no matter how hard we shake our heads, we can’t get a single one to sprout. From our experience we know that generating ideas from nothing is complicated, so we are going to dedicate this post to offering a process that can help us discover sources to generate innovative ideas to build profitable businesses .
Of course, creativity is a fundamental tool, and there are many techniques to generate ideas, so we are not going to try creativity techniques, but other types of processes that, based on creativity, will activate our mind as if it were a source to generate ideas. innovative to develop business .
If we think cold, it is difficult for them to arise, so in order to start with something, in Innokabi we propose these 7 steps with dynamics to generate ideas:
Think of a target customer segment , a customer with whom we want to work, meet, and empathize . Sometimes it happens that we think about clients whose profile is so far from our tastes, hobbies, behaviors or ideals, that we find it very difficult to identify with them. Therefore, the first step is to find a customer segment that is attractive to us and make it as concrete as possible, in order to be clear about who that customer is and empathize with him.
Thinking about the target customer is how the most successful business ideas are generated.
Example: Couples between 30 and 40 years old, with young children between 3 and 10 years old, who work and do not have time to play sports. It is a customer segment that is specific enough to work with.
2.-Find out what problems our customer segment has
In this phase, what we want is to find problems in our customer segment, which are the starting point of many methodologies, such as, for example, lean startups . It is time to start generating innovative ideas. But the first step to know ” how business ideas are generated “, is not to focus on solutions, what we are looking for in this phase are problems. What problems do we think our customer segment has and for this, we will use some techniques, such as the gamestorming technique .
3.-Generate a lot of problems with Gamestorming
The Gamestorming technique, discussed in depth in a previous post , helps us generate innovative ideas following the same creative process that our brains follow. In addition, Gamestorming techniques allow us to put into practice games to generate ideas.
Here we show you the phases to generate them.
- In the first phase, starting from a creative challenge, we are generating ideas in a divergent process. It is the warm-up phase of our brain, as if it were an athlete who must perform a competition. For the warm-up, some creative games are proposed.
- In the second phase, what is done is to explore, generate more ideas , the more the better, order them, classify them, establish relationships, …
- In the third phase, what we do is a convergent process, to select the ideas and finally keep the best ones.
In each of the phases, different creativity techniques are used, which allows us to open ourselves to divergent thinking, generating a business idea, a process of exploration, and finally filtering them. The techniques for each of the phases can be seen at the following link .
4.-Value Proposition Canvas and Early Adopter
With the value proposition canvas and Early Adopter , what we do is empathize with customers, know what behaviors they have, what objectives they want to meet, what actions they carry out and what problems those actions cause them.
Generally, the problems are those that we have generated in the previous phase, but sometimes new ones are generated, simply by the fact of putting name and surnames to the target clients. It is a process worth doing. (You can download the Value Proposition and Early Adopter canvas on our resource page )
The Value Proposition Canvas focuses on two key boxes on Osterwalder’s Business Model Canvas . Customer boxes and value proposition. At the beginning of any idea, they are the fundamental parts of the business model, because without customers or without a value proposition , there is no business.
5.-Propose solutions to the problems detected
Once we have target customers and problems to solve, what we do is find solutions that satisfy those customers. The solution generation process (which will lead to innovative ideas for companies) can be based again on the Gamestorming technique , and of course the star tool in any creativity process is the Postits .
Let us not forget that the solutions devised will be based on problems that we have thought exist, but that does not mean that they really exist. To check it we must pass point 7.
6.-Identify benefits and select the most appropriate solution
Identifying benefits is important to make a selection of all the ideas we have had to solve the problems. We will choose the solution or solutions that provide the most benefits or that solve the most pressing problems of our clients. The selection process is best done with team members, because it is better to have different perspectives to choose the best option.
7.-Go outside and talk to customers ( get out of the building )
Going out to talk to clients is the fundamental step to check if everything we have devised is actually fulfilled. Most of the processes fail because entrepreneurs with a good business idea are left without doing this step, without checking if their ideas are based on real needs. It is necessary to check the starting hypotheses, before launching to build a prototype, investing time, money and enthusiasm in a project that may not be worth it.
Therefore, as we usually advise, you should do the market research yourself . You are the one who should talk to customers. You are the one to do the problem interview .
And of course as a last step it is essential to know how to present a business idea, as a key step to get financing, investors and especially customers.
At this point a good strategy for online marketing , positioning strategies and social networking they will also help you bring your innovative business idea to the end.
Those would be the next steps.
We can help you design your website and position your company on the Internet, transmitting the value proposition of your business. If you need positioning in Google, Online Marketing and Social Networks, contact us by clicking here or sending an email to digitaltechupdates@gmail.com
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