Tag Archives: Ideas

Own the Road

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If you are a startup, owning the road is what makes the difference.
Creating a niche/competitive product is no longer what makes you differentiated. Everyone has something to offer. What makes the cut is, you creating a platform for yourself and/or your product.
In idea evaluation 50% weightage goes towards the differentiator. 5%goes to testing, 20% weighs towards what you are offering and 25% weighs towards you Idea itself.
So, create your platform and own it. Your client will drive your growth.

Ideas as Platform

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When we have an idea, we focus on building the product. What happens eventually is that the product gets into iterations and over the period of time becomes redundant for various reasons.
What we need to focus on is to build our idea as a platform. Think of it as a broader solution and the products are offerings of the solution. What happens with this is that the ideation has a broader spectrum and it gives us opportunities to build on the platform.
This lays the foundation for the future of your startup. Look at any major organisation, they build their offerings on the platform. Maggie does not just sell noodles, they have soups, pasta’s etc. What is the platform? – 2 minute snack/food.
Look at any car manufacturing company. They specialise in manufacturing a SUV, Sedan, 4X4 etc. The outcomes are quite different and appeal to varied consumers. Maruti in India focus’s on Sedan’s and they offer Compact to Mid-end cars – Alto 800 to Ciaz to Grand Vitara. They have a offering to varied economic diversities. This is how they build their market share.
Entrepreneurs should first identify the platform and then build their offerings to solve components of the problem so that their offering can be varied, affordable, sustainable and if changes are required, only one solution can be altered and remaining in tact.
So, the next time you are addressing a problem – create the platform and not just one solution.

Where do Ideas come from?

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Most of the complex problems in the world are already solved in the past; Problems which are not on priority are being solved now and the boring problems have been left for this generation to solve.

From Computing to Search to Facebook to LinkedIn to Twitter, all these are not new innovations/inventions, but problems which were solved previously and are now addressed at larger platforms.

Today’s Innovations are stemming from frustrations or inability to connect various solutions. If you look at online market places which bridge the gap in the B2C and B2B segment, this is not a high priority problem. There are existing solutions where we can order goods (by word of mouth, by friends etc). This solution has a limitation. The key limitation is that the choice’s are very minimal and you do not know the variety available in the market. When the problem is magnified, we thought of bringing the world shopping to our finger tips.

For instance, this blog idea is not my invention, but a thought which came about while I was reading about FitMeIn – An online application which offers monthly multiple fitness memberships. What is the pain point they are addressing – Boredom of going to gym everyday. Similarly, quite a few solutions we see today are amalgamation of existing solutions.

Today, there are many platforms from where you can pick ideas if you have the passion to solve them. Use Quora, where you can find many questions and possible answers. Research on this platform to find ideas which you can take forward and solve them. Organisations like HeadStart, Open Coffee Club etc provide a platform for us to solve problems.

Don’t Copy and Paste, but Adapt and Paste is the new mantra.

Where do Ideas come from?

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Since the time I remember, I have always been thinking as to where ideas come from and what does it take for an idea to take off? 

All the successful entrepreneurs share their journey and we get inspired. We want to do something different, but we don’t know where to begin. 

I constantly have ideas which fly by me and then gets lost in time. 

Have a small pocket dairy / use your phone to jot down your idea and you can revist it later. 

What if you are driving or not in a mood to type or write anything – Use the voice recording app on your phone and record you idea. 

Evaluate it later and take it forward. 

Simple. But Complex. 

There is one thig stronger than all armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has ome – Victor Hugo