Great Business Ideas Come From Great Inconveniences
Thursday, March 12th, 2009Coming up with a great business idea doesn’t have to be difficult or complex. It can actually be relatively easy if you have the focus to be more self-aware during your daily activities. World-changing business ideas have come from all kinds of everyday people, not just the smart or the educated.
The trick to coming up with a good business idea is to force yourself to be more cognizant of daily problems and inconveniences. By being more aware of these issues you are tuning your mind to come up with creative solutions to them. Believe it or not, most people simply do not do this.
Most people float through their daily routines, enduring the problems and hassles of life with a sort of blind ambivalence. They are just focused on making it through the day. Coming up with creative and new solutions is usually not high on the agenda because we all lead such busy lives.
Unfortunately, these kinds of people almost never come up with great business ideas because there is little time in their day for pause or reflection. It really is true that ideas and solutions arise to meet emerging needs in the marketplace. If your mind is not prepared and receptive to inspired solutions, however, you have little chance of discovering that next big thing.
To be more specific, you must make a conscious effort to think of solutions whenever issues arise in your daily routine. If a task takes too long, think of how it could be done quicker. If a chore becomes something you dread, brainstorm ways to make it easier or less complicated.
As an example, small service companies are springing up all over the nation to address the annoyance of yard pet waste. Picking up doggy doo is typically not a pet owner’s favorite chore because it takes up valuable time and is gross. The interesting thing to note, though, is that people had been doing it on their own for decades before someone had the presence of mind to make a business out of it.
Along a similar vein, look no further than the GPS dog collar as a great product idea that arose from a familiar problem. Who among us hasn’t lost a dog or known someone who has? Yet only recently did someone have the level of reflection required to recognize that this was an inconvenience that could be easily addressed with modern technology.
As you can see, sometimes the best ideas come from the worst or most boring events in our lives, if only we have the open-mindedness to receive them. It really comes down to having a more positive and constructive mindset. View problems as potential opportunities and before long you should start coming up with some truly great business ideas.
