Among the most common problems that ambitious entrepreneurs face is a lack of direction.
Every company begins with an idea. While most publications on the internet claim that ideas are everywhere, you may still have difficulty coming up with an excellent one.
Furthermore, even if you believe you have a strong concept in mind, you may consider alternative options and become confused about which one to pursue.
That’s why in this article, you will learn important innovative tips for generating new business ideas you can apply in 2022.
Let’s start.
1. Don’t overcomplicate the idea generation process
What most people don’t realize is, coming up with ideas is an easy process.
If you already have an item or service in mind, the rest of the idea generation process only becomes difficult when you think about two things:
- Setting yourself apart from other brands that provide similar offerings
- The relevance and substance of your idea
Overthinking these things will only complicate your idea generation process. To make things easier, you can try the following:
- Ask your employees about it. They may have suggestions you never thought about.
- Talk about your idea with friends and family. Additional inputs always help, particularly if they’re also into business.
- Think like a customer. Refer to your idea and imagine yourself as the customer. What would make you buy the product or service?
Doing these things only means that there are additional considerations that entrepreneurs must make before embarking on a single project.
As you study and improve your idea with thorough consideration and review, your concept will become more meaningful, innovative, and significant.
2. Walk with your customers
While we strive to understand the experience through the eyes of the consumer, we sometimes can’t simply because we know too much from the inside of the firm.
It’s difficult to distinguish between what we believe the client perceives and what the customer really experiences.
The idea is to put yourself in the shoes of the customer and see your company through their eyes. It is different from recognizing what you prefer and anticipate as a consumer.
This means you must understand your clients’ preferences and opinions without referring to your own. However, this is quite tricky to do. Even frontline personnel often struggle to characterize their clients or what is important to them objectively.
Still, if a company truly wants to walk with its clients, it must make studying the customers a habit. It entails comprehending the clients’ daily lives and knowing where you can fit in to effectively serve them.
A great example of this is how the current president of the Philippines drives a taxi back when he was still a mayor just to randomly talk with his constituents about their present state of living.
That’s how he creates projects that benefit his people, resulting in him being well-loved by his people.
This only proves that combining business strategies and insights regarding what your customers want from the business will provide you the confidence and capacity to make purposeful decisions that will match or exceed their needs.
And then, you get to create ideas with real business value.
3. Write new ideas that pop up while you’re working
Sometimes, when you focus on something, thoughts and ideas suddenly come.
When this happens, writing them is great to keep them flowing. Record them immediately and type (or write) them when you can.
Remember that inspiration comes out of the blue:
They can arrive at any time of the day, so no matter how unsure you are of the ideas that come to you, write them down. Reading them in the next few days or weeks can lead to more concepts and further improvements.
That being said, you need to be ready anytime. Make sure to:
- Carry a notepad with you
- Write ideas and inspiration on your phone
- Voice or video record your idea
Don’t forget to go over your list at a given time and examine it thoroughly. Try expanding them or researching about them to determine which ideas would make the cut.
These concepts, when given enough study and resources, can eventually turn into viable business projects that can bring enormous success.
4. Use brainstorming software to help you bridge your thoughts
Generating ideas has always involved brainstorming:
It’s a technique used by companies for a long time in discovering unique and breakthrough ideas. It’s a method of solving issues, discovering new ideas, and exploring new approaches.
When you want to come up with new business ideas, brainstorming is a great way to keep your creative juices on track. It provides an avenue for producing fresh and profitable concepts. Hence, using brainstorming software is ideal.
Brainstorming tools are particularly developed to assist in the stimulation, collection, and organization of ideas. They enable distant collaborative brainstorming while simultaneously capturing ideas.
Brainstorming software enables teams to vote and comment on insights gathered. As it helps in bridging your thoughts, it makes it easy to identify how to proceed with every concept that’s been considered.
Accept Mission is a brainstorming software that can be used to arrange brainstorming sessions that are place and time-independent.
With this, you can also:
- Collect, store, manage, and search through gathered ideas
- Integrate ideation procedures with other tools
- Perform keyword analysis
- Audit ideation process
- Get useful thoughts and feedback
- Create specific tactics based on the given answers and alternatives
5. Start an idea box for your colleagues and customers
An idea box is a great way to encourage your employees to offer their recommendations, insights, concerns, and comments to any of the company’s upcoming projects and activities.
While traditionally known as a physical object, idea boxes nowadays are set up digitally.
Launching an idea box is extremely useful for businesses looking to promote employee engagement, especially if it allows anonymity. Employees can provide feedback on working conditions, processes, HR and benefits, colleagues, or management.
Or they can contribute concepts that can eventually be honed into successful projects for the company.
Aside from having employees feel more involved in the ideation process, idea boxes may also provide the following benefits:
- Boosted morale. Especially when proposals are incorporated or concerns are addressed.
- Better communication. By providing a formal means for employees to contribute their ideas, a suggestion box may increase communication between management and staff.
- Increased creativity and problem-solving. The suggestion box encourages staff to not only identify but actively provide solutions to issues.
- Improved employee engagement. When employees realize that you value their comments, they are more likely to be engaged at work.
Remember, the kind of ideation box you use is determined by your personnel, the nature of your firm, and the equipment individuals need to perform their duties.
A physical box may be handy if you have a population that works in one physical area and is less reliant on computers for their professions.
However, if your team is partially virtual, dispersed across many locations, or heavily reliant on computers and mobile devices, a virtual box may be more viable.
6. Improve (innovate) on an existing service or product
Why create anything fresh when you can use tried-and-true ideas?
Examine ideas that have been previously used by other organizations. Consider the potential for improvement and change. Think about all the possible things that you can do with them, then add your personal touch and determine what you can do to make it your own.
However, keep in mind that you cannot just go and replicate someone else’s ideas. It is unlikely to be beneficial both for you and your business.
Do your own research to learn what customers think about the existing product or service. Figure out what is lacking, and then enhance it.
Take a look at Thomas Edison, for instance.
Thomas Edison, the brilliant inventor, seldom came up with ground-breaking ideas. The lightbulb, as we all know, was Edison’s most renowned innovation.
However, Edison did not “create” the lightbulb. Rather, he considerably improved it by producing a lightbulb that employed lower current electricity, a tiny carbonized filament, and a better vacuum within the globe.
Edison’s advancements result in a dependable, long-lasting source of light. Simply put, if something does not meet your personal standards, then go and make a better version of it.
7. Sleep on it
A large body of evidence supports the assumption that sleep improves creativity.
In one research, for example, Wagner and colleagues assigned participants to a difficult and time-consuming numerical problem.
What the participants didn’t realize was that there was a hidden secret method incorporated into the job and that if they figured it out, it would dramatically accelerate their progress.
All participants were briefed on the job, and some were permitted to sleep for eight hours while others were kept up.
Participants kept working on the job after the eight-hour mark had passed. The results indicated that 60% of the sleep group found the concealed technique, but only 23% of the waking group did.
The above-mentioned research indicates that sleep permitted the subjects’ brains to cognitively rearrange the material they had learned, which led them to effectively create fresh and innovative responses.
Meaning, when you discover something new then subsequently sleep on it, it gets clearer and easier to digest.
Develop and test your solution
The development and testing of a concept are vital to its success. You’re putting a lot of time, money, and other resources at stake if you anticipate a concept to be a big hit on the first try.
Businesses typically skip this stage because they are anxious to get their product to market.
They go on a business journey without a plan, neglecting to build a company strategy or business model based on market testing/research.
They are also unable to identify their target audience. You’ll never know who will profit from your idea unless you try it.
Without this understanding, your marketing efforts may fall on deaf ears, resulting in the demise of your amazing product proposal.
To get started, feel free to begin implementing and testing your solution by signing up for a trial version of Accept Mission now — the best innovation and idea management platform online.
