Have you ever been bitten by the startup bug? Does it make you dream and aspire you to be an entrepreneur?
If yes, then how do you go about it? What is the first step towards building a startup that is viable and valuable?
Well, if you’re looking for answers, keep reading further to know all about ideation and how to choose the right idea from thousands that are floating around in your head.
Creating a startup with a vision to tackle problems and solve them better than others is the difference between a successful and a failed startup. You can do everything perfectly from marketing, procurement, delivery and more, but if your idea is flawed or unviable from the beginning, you are on the wrong trajectory and most likely doomed to fail. It all comes back to the ideation phase.
Here is the A-Z guide on ideation and everything that you need to consider before you start working on an idea:
1) Discovery Phase
The creation of each startup begins with the ‘discovery phase’ which is the first step in the process of finding that killer idea. It’s a 4 step phase where you:
1) Think of a wide array of ideas and problems that are worth solving
2) Critically analyze them
3) Discard the bad ones or the ones that are not viable
4) Pick the one with the highest percentage or likelihood of being successful.
2) Utility Trumps Novelty
Innovation is the practical implementation of ideas to create new products and services or improve existing ones. It is the driving force behind the birth of a startup. A better way to solve existing problems is what makes them valuable.
Now that you have finalised your potential idea through the discovery phase, it is time to put it through the age-old, all-important test of Utility vs Novelty.
Is your idea useful enough? Or is it only new and shiny, but not practical at all?
Ask yourself these questions before you proceed with your selected idea because not everything new is valuable or viable. If it is not useful or valuable, it’s time to go back to the drawing board and keep chalking up new ideas and ways to solve problems until you find the right one. It is important to come up with ideas that focus on utility rather than novelty. Not all new ideas are valuable if they are not useful.
Most of the time, solutions for a problem already exist, but what matters is who solves it in the most creative, efficient and cost-effective way through innovation and sound strategy.
3) Is Your Idea Scalable?
An idea, apart from being innovative and valuable, also needs to have the potential to dominate the market and be scalable. So what does that mean?
Can your idea be scaled to such a level that your startup can disrupt the status quo in the market? Is it big enough to make you a market leader? Can it help your startup grow exponentially? Is it a game-changer?
Or does it help you create or enter a niche, dominate that niche and then grow that niche to the point that it eats up a heft chunk of the market, thereby making you a big player in the market?
Always aim to be scalable to the point that becoming a unicorn (a $1 B business) is possible through your idea to increase your chances of being a successful startup.
Hopefully, this detailed and step-by-step guide on ideation helped you get a clear overview on everything involved in the most important stage in the creation of a startup.
Written by Gagan Dhawan
