You've seen lots of ideas for startup businesses come and go over the years. What factors have you observed make for a good business idea?
A good business idea can often be one that initially you're not really sure if it's a great idea or a really bad one -
it's usually one that is something in between. What I mean by that is if something's a really great idea then the obvious question is 'why hasn't someone done that before?'.
The opposite scenario is also true - if it's a really dumb idea, then there's a good reason why no one has done it. So it's that area in the middle where I generally see the best ideas coming from.
Often those ideas are also inspired by people's insights gained from working in or around a particular industry or market. The mad inventor-style ideas - the random ones that just pop into someone's head in the middle of the night - are generally the ones that are really hard to commercialise without that previous understanding of how the existing market behaves and operates.
When asking people to adopt any new idea you're asking them to change their current behaviour, and getting them to do that comes down to how compelling a proposition you have to meet their unmet need or want.
The other thing about ideas is you have to understand the time and money it takes to get a new idea to market. Therefore having an innate knowledge of what the latest trends and developments are in the marketplace, and trying to move ahead of the curve to where the market is going to be - not necessarily where the market is today - is really important.
What are the key factors for taking an idea and turning it into a viable business?
The key thing first of all is to validate the idea and establish if there is true a market need. One of the typical things that people who haven't started a business before will say is 'first I need to patent my idea' and they can spend a fortune doing so.
My suggestion for non-research intensive ideas is, before you invest money on patenting your idea, first of all establish if there is a real market opportunity for it. You don't need to say what your invention is - you can go out and ask open questions about the market or the need - but there's no better time to establish if there's a real opportunity than before you actually build or develop the thing.
Also, an idea on its own is never enough. Very rarely does anyone have a unique idea that no one has had before, so part of the challenge is doing something with it in an appropriate manner. As an entrepreneur it's really about keeping that balance between dogged determination and resilience, and knowing when to say 'I'm not getting enough traction, let's move on to the next idea'.
