“Ideas shape the course of History ” — John Maynard Keynes
When I initially started to explore, I use to shut myself in a room close my eyes and think hard, later I found myself gazing into the starry night sky to come up with wonderful ideas, only to realise later that business ideas do not lie in the darkness behind our eyes nor does it lie in the starry night.
Later, I was taken aback when it occurred to me that ideas lie everywhere like the oxygen we breathe, the sunlight available to us, Likewise, ideas lie potent everywhere. Hidden to our plain sight, nowhere to be seen, unable to recognise, identify, and pinpoint it correctly.
So how to come up with business ideas?
Ideas are nothing but solutions to a given problem, wherever there is a problem there is a solution, which needs to be figured out, we tend to ignore, curse and ridicule every problem, which comes in our way without realizing that an idea is lying dormant for someone to recognize, pick it up and work on it to create a complete solution. It requires second-level thinking for e.g just to give you a context imagine.
- While going to the office, suddenly it starts raining, my first reaction is to crib and curse the rain god, after some time I do second-level thinking on how to overcome this problem?- Can I develop something which does not soak my formal clothes, of course, we have raincoats, but here I am talking about formal clothes which do not get wet, Someone thought about wrinkles on the clothes on similar lines and designed wrinkle-free clothes (clothes which do not require ironing).
- Similarly, I am driving a car, suddenly out of nowhere a kid came in front of the car and we came up with the idea of “Automatic emergency braking system” it applies the brakes immediately without any input or knowledge of the driver, eliminating the fatal accident, life saved, money saved and all the hassles eliminated.
- Choosing a wide variety of apparel or other items from the comfort of home we discovered — E-commerce
- Writing and depositing the cheque, travelling to a bank to avoid all this we have — Online Payments
- To avoid going to a bank just to withdraw cash we have — ATM’s
- Take it one step ahead, going to ATM is also a hassle so, just do payments via money transfers using — Wallets and Online payments.
See, so many problems have been solved here just by using a click of a button on a mobile phone.
All these examples above are nothing but someone, rather than cribbing, took one more step ahead, did second-level thinking, reflected upon it and came up with a solution to the problem. No wonder they made more money than us.
If you are finding all this overwhelming maybe you are not well prepared or unclear to take the plunge. Make all the necessary due diligence, sit, think through, plan and act accordingly.
So, ideas do not require imagination?
Strange, all these years I thought that ideas come from inspiration and imagination. Well, let us think logically and break this down into 2 parts.
Identification of a Problem
Here there is no need to be creative, nature is smart enough to put many problems on our plate, we just need to acknowledge the problem, recognise it and do second-level thinking, on how to eliminate, reduce or resolve the problem we are facing. We just need an attitude to appreciate and trigger our cerebral muscles to understand the problem completely.
Eliminating, minimizing or resolving a problem
Here, comes the difficult part, how can I solve a given problem at hand, this requires all the imagination I have, to come up with innovative ideas and keep working and thinking on them. We have to keep on feeding the brain with all the material available to understand/analyse the problem correctly and to come up with a solution. Our search for finding a solution will test all our skills, qualifications, experience, persistence, patience and perseverance. It will also test our mental, psychological and physical capacity and capability. It requires great inspiration to keep on pursuing despite making little or no progress.
To give you a context, we will further explore the example discussed earlier, on how to figure out a formal dress not getting wet, this will require a basic understanding of all the garments, fabrics, industrial processing used in the manufacturing of garments, chemicals, dyes used, If we come up with a solution then does it work on all the fabrics, can it be done at huge scale(commercialization), is it damaging the fabric, is it harmful to the person wearing it.
See, finding a solution to one problem has created so many problems in itself, this is just a peep and glimpse into understanding the amount of effort that is needed. It requires all the imagination, skill, hard work, thinking, understanding, reading, meeting people, research and dedication to come up with a scalable solution, which can be deployed for the benefit of the public at large.
So next time you encounter a problem 🙂 you know what to do.
“You cannot use up creativity the more you use, the more you have it ”- Maya Angelou
Avoid getting into traditional businesses which are facing technological disruption, as it makes all the sense to be a disruptor rather than getting disrupted.
Having a co-found or partner can be of great help if there is proper understanding, synergy and right skillset and will take a long way in building and cementing your business.