Generating Business Ideas

Good day everyone! Some of you might come across this blog entry because you're looking for business ideas and business opportunities online. Maybe some of you are just looking around. Regardless of the reason, I will make sure that you will learn something about entrepreneurship today.

Just to give you a brief background of my self, my name is Daryl M. Plandes, I graduated from the Manila Science High School and I’m currently taking up BS Business Administration major in Business Management at the Asia Pacific College. Asia Pacific College is the brainchild of the partnership of SM Foundation, owned by the Philippines’ richest man, Mr. Henry Sy and IBM Philippines. My sole purpose in writing these blog entries is to impart all the things that I have learned about Entrepreneurship.

Today, I will be discussing “Business idea” and “Opportunity analysis”. What is with these concepts that most of us don’t know? These words may sound too technical for an average person but tell you what, these concepts are as easy as A, B, C and you will surely enjoy applying these principles in your daily life.

If you would look around you, you’ll find out that prospective business people have all the excitement, eagerness and energy needed to start a business. These feelings are a must, but are not enough. I’ll go straight to the point; we need a unique business idea to survive in the business world and to prevent ourselves from ending up as just another statistical data, another business failure.

Of all the businesses that have been introduced since time immemorial, what should we choose? What are the factors to be considered? We have several options. We can just partner up with a very successful franchising company. A fast-food chain for example; just give them $500,000 to a million, study at their university for a year, learn how to time the fries, flip burgers and operate the soda dispenser and Voila!, you already have an 80% chance of success. Sounds very simple and easy right? The only problem is not most of us have enough money to buy a proven-successful business franchise.

Another way to do it is to create something new. Come up with a very unique idea and work on it. The only question is how. Aspiring entrepreneurs can find new business ideas from consumers, existing products and services, distribution channels, government, and research and development. But with such a wide variety of business ideas, one will find it very difficult and confusing to organize his thoughts and come up with a decision.

I have provided here a list of Methods of Generating Ideas, adapted from the book Entrepreneurship by Robert D. Hisrich and company. I have paraphrased some of the definitions to make it easier to understand. This list can be used not only for the purpose of generating business ideas. You can also use this at work and in school.

1. Focus Group – group of individuals sharing and discussing ideas and opinions in a structured and formal way
2. Brainstorming – participants are encouraged to share each and every idea that enters their mind. There is no right or wrong. Usually, a very broad problem statement starts the brainstorming process.
3. Problem Inventory Analysis – In this method, we focus on the existing problems. We use these problems to come up with new ideas. These ideas are not necessarily the solution.
4. Reverse Brainstorming – In this technique, we’ll try to focus on the negative sides of every idea that has been generated through brainstorming. I call this the “sifting” process.
5. Gordon Method – This method is somewhat related to brainstorming. But to make sure that ideas are not biased or dictated by preconceived notions and beliefs, the exact problem is kept unknown to the participants.
6. Checklist Method – A method of generating new ideas by making a list of related issues
7. Free Association – First, a word or a phrase related to the problem is written down. Then, participants are free to associate anything to that word or phrase. This will then create chain of ideas without straying away from the topic.
8. Forced Relationships – Developing a new idea by looking at product combinations. Sometimes, this method will allow the entrepreneur to arrive at a particular concept which is a combination of two existing business concepts.
9. Collective Notebook – This to me is a very essential technique in entrepreneurship. There are ideas that we forget. Some of these ideas might just be the lucky one for us. In the collective notebook method, team members are required to regularly record ideas and observations. These ideas are summed up during the week.
10. Attribute Listing – Developing new ideas by looking at the positive and negative sides of an existing product or service.
11. BIG-dream Approach – Ideas should be conceptualized without any constraints until an idea is developed into a workable form.
12. Parameter Analysis – Just like in mathematics, we will be able to solve the problem by analyzing and synthesizing the parameters and variable.

Mr. Ramon Duremdes Jr., our entrepreneurship professor here at the Asia Pacific College, introduced an activity to the class a month ago. This activity according to him will help us in developing business ideas. He asked us to come up with a list of frustrations, wants, likes, dislikes, expectations, and preferences of college students like us. After that, he asked us to come up with possible solutions that we can recommend – We now  know what was lacking, what was inadequate, what was good, what needed improvements and what the college student market needs. All we have to do now is provide the needed solution, a product or service that will answer the need. - Simple, yet a very effective way to generate new business ideas.

Another thing that we can look into is innovation. In layman’s term, innovation is simply improving an existing idea. There are countless proven business ideas that exist today. They can serve as our guide in creating something new. According to Warren Buffet, in order to succeed in the business world, one must differentiate.

Once we’re done choosing the business idea that we want to pursue, it is now time to analyze the opportunities available to us. The product or service that we decided to offer should be described in detail. A prototype should be made and the entire process of doing business should be outlined carefully. Competition should also be discussed in detail as well as the positioning of your venture. For more information about opportunity recognition, click here. This article from the Harvard Business Review, written by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne will help you identify a winning business idea when you see one.

Some of you, especially those techno-savvy individuals, might consider doing business over the internet. You might find it easier and more interesting. You’re just so lucky because Professor Michael Rappa, the director of the Institute for Advanced Analytics at North Carolina State University, has provided us with “Business Models on the Web”. It is a tool that will help us choose what particular web-based business to adapt.

Other articles about these topics can be found here.

 

Journey to Entrepreneurship: Part 1

What does it take to have an entrepreneurial mindset? This question popped up several weeks ago when one of my classmates discussed this topic before the entire class. Being business majors at the Asia Pacific College, we are required to take the Entrepreneurship course/subject as part of the curriculum. And one of the requirements to pass the subject is to come up with aPowerPoint presentation discussing a particular topic in our reference book, Entrepreneurship by Hisrich, Peters, and Shepherd. This particular topic was discussed in advance by our professor, Mr. Ramon Duremdes Jr. and I must say, this topic caught my attention because of several reasons. First, since I was still a little kid, my dream is to finish my studies, work for a great company, retire young and start my own business venture. But the thing is, I don’t have a very clear idea how to do that. Second, Entrepreneurship as a process, as an undertaking has been very intriguing to me as it is has been to most of us. The common notion is that an entrepreneur is someone who owns a business, someone whose boss is no other than himself. That to me is a very good attempt to explain what the word entrepreneur means. But looking on another perspective, does every one of us know what it takes to be one?

           Three years ago, I read a book by Robert Kiyosaki entitled “Cashflow Quadrant”. This was the second Kiyosaki book that I have read, the “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” being the first one. WhatKiyosaki was trying to tell the readers of “Cashflow Quadrant” was somewhat related to the topic “Entrepreneurial Mindset”. In my mind, they kind of complemented each other. The “Cashflow Quadrant” will try to direct your path to Entrepreneurship while the “Entrepreneurial Mindset”, which is the second chapter in our reference book, will somehow make the journey to entrepreneurship a lot easier for you.

           Entrepreneurship according to Robert D. Hisrich et.al., is the process of creating something new and assuming the risks and rewards. There are two approaches to this process. First, the entrepreneur can undergo the causal process. That is to establish first your desired outcome and focus on the means to achieve the goal. Another way to do it is to start with what you already have, what you know, and whom you know and select among the possible combinations and outcomes. This is what is known as the effectuation process. The effectuationprocess is further subdivided into five basic principles which I do not intend to discuss in this blog entry.

 People that are not in anyway interested in putting up their own business can also benefit and improve their lives by practicing these principles and by acquiring some entrepreneurial skills. This is what we call intrapreneurship. Maybe it’s in this particular blog that you have heard this word for the very first time. Intrapreneurship simply means practicing entrepreneurship within an existing and established organization implementing a specific business model. Some refer to it as “Corporate Entrepreneurship”. There is such thing asentrepreneurially fostering environment. In this kind of environment, entrepreneurial actions are being highly encouraged, regarded as both feasible and desirable. An entrepreneuriallymanaged firm recognizes and leverages on individuals with unique ideas. Just look at what Steve Jobs has done to Apple Computers. His creativity and resilience spearheaded Apple’s domination of the personal computer and portable music player industry. 

           There are two things that are inevitable in life, death, and of course taxes. But if we decide to become an entrepreneur; we would have to add another thing to this list. Risk, that is. Probably one of the best distinctions between a conventional managerial setting and an entrepreneurial setting is the attitude towards risk. Managers tend to avoid risk thus, preventing them from realizing the true potential of the business. Entrepreneurs on the other hand understand that risk is an essential part of the process. So instead of evading risk, they come up with ideas and solutions to minimize it while maximizing rewards at the same time. This gave birth to the term “Risk Management”.

           Entrepreneurial mindset does not only cover favorable states of nature. It is also best tested during times of failure. There are times when it seems like the entire universe conspired to make you fail. You might have incurred a loss or the expansion of your business failed. There are a lot of worst case scenarios that might happen to you and your business but acting the right way and doing the right things during these hard times might just be the deciding factor whether you’ll recover or go bankrupt. When all else fails, it is you, the entrepreneur, who has to make the decision. What’s next is always up to you.

There is a lot more to entrepreneurship and the entrepreneurial mindset than what I have written here. Just to give you the basic concept, “entrepreneurial mindset involves the ability to rapidly sense, act, and mobilize, even under uncertain conditions.” – Robert D. Hisrich et.al.  

For those who are interested to start up a new venture and looking for ideas to help them decide, you can visit the GoNegosyo website. This website features a lot of successfulentrepreneurs and possible business opportunities.  You will be surprised by the diversity of business ideas made available to you.