Ideas are a Dime a Dozen

For many people, it might come as a surprise that an idea, among other important parameters to succeed at venture building, ranks as one of the lowest. This does not mean that an idea for a venture is not important, but that it is superseded by the complexity of the venture building process.

Here is a simple thought experiment for you to test this:

If you are a daily commuter in Bangalore, spending hours together in traffic jams on the streets is something you would inevitably encounter. Consider this as a problem you intend to solve and take a minute to list down the different solutions you would think of, to address this problem.

When this problem was addressed in a public forum of a group of aspiring entrepreneurs, the typical answers we heard were – creating satellite offices, enabling better internet connections to allow people to work while they are commuting, better public transport, etc.

Do you see how easy it is to generate an idea? And if ideas are easy to generate, can we generate many? Yes.

The above thought experiment should let you know that as ideas are so easy to generate, it is not at all the most important component of your venture building efforts. Do not fret over the ownership of the idea. The secret of a successful venture building, lies not in the imagining of an idea, but in the execution of it.

What if one were to take the same situation and frame it differently?  Let us take another scenario. A tired employee wants to feel refreshed and engaged while commuting in the horrible traffic. Immediately, you begin thinking of solutions that have a higher entertainment quotient in them. These ideas may consist of streaming movies or setting up individual games, or extending it further to collaborative multi-player games.

There is another aspect of human thinking visible here. If the problem is framed differently, a different set of solutions come to the fore. The questions, as a creative individual that you need to ask about the situation then are – How are the situations being framed? Could there be any alternate frames of looking at the situation?

In both the above exercises, you would have realized that ideas often take the form of a solution to a specific problem. However, this solution is an imagined one and captures within itself the product-service or a combination of these offerings. The venture to be built has this offering, but also includes the potential market for this offering which serves the means to get to these markets. When these dimensions are incorporated, we shift away from merely having a product or service idea to having a venture idea.

Ask yourself:

How are you framing the situation? Could there be alternate frames to look at the situation?