The good, the bad, and the ugly

Ideas are easy. Good ideas are hard. Excellent ideas are really hard. And turning any idea into a successful business is harder still.

“It’s amazing how long it can take to see the obvious.”
Ian Stewart, author, Nature’s Numbers

When you’re launching a new business venture or project, it helps to start with the very best ideas right from the beginning. The very best ideas are unique, innovative, and robust. But how can you tell if your ideas meet these criteria?

To find out, you’ll need to answer these five bulletproofing questions:

1. Who are your target customers?
2. What problem are you solving for your customers?
3. What must change about the status quo for your idea to succeed?
4. How will customers know you’ve “delivered the goods?”
5. How does your idea contribute to your business success?

Do this together with one or more of your colleagues or advisors. Keep your responses short and sweet: give yourself no more than 15 words and 15 seconds to get your answers across. Consider asking some of your potential customers to help out. Most of all, apply the “Three R’s” of bulletproofing: Review, Revise, Repeat.

A conclusion is where you stopped thinking.
originalthinking

When you bulletproof your ideas using this approach, two important things will happen:

• By taking the customer’s point of view right from the start, you’ll expose hidden strengths and weaknesses in your business ideas that would otherwise go unnoticed until too late
• Secondly, you’ll discover a dramatic improvement in how well you grasp your customers’s real needs so that you can improve your ideas to lead to profitable solutions that actually make a difference

For more insight to using the five bulletproofing questions outlined here, read Bulletproofing Your Business Ideas (coming shortly).