Every project starts from a business idea that must be based on an opportunity from the market.
When identifying an opportunity and, therefore, developing a good idea, the entrepreneur has to take into account his creative and innovative capacities, motivations, and accumulated experience in the area or sector.
For this, it requires having a deep knowledge of the environment (of the socioeconomic situation, of the market, of the clients, of the competitors), since it has to assess the needs that it can satisfy, the market gaps that it can cover and the competitive advantage with respect to the competition.
The business idea must meet the following considerations:
- It must be based on the identification of an opportunity.
- The opportunities are in the environment of the company.
- The business idea must provide value for companies, customers and society – utility for the market.
The business idea must satisfy any need of future clients and / or add some differentiating factor to the products and / or services already on the market.
It is necessary to carry out an initial study on the possibilities offered by the market, detect the existing gaps, detect the sources where to obtain information on possible business opportunities.
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Where To Look For Business Ideas?
The problem that is generally posed to the entrepreneur lies in how to generate or find a good business idea. In this sense, we could point out some habits that could become a source of idea generation, such as the following:
Observation of the environment and analyze the sociocultural and normative changes that have occurred today. Perhaps in these changes we can obtain a relationship of business opportunities, based on the needs or motivations that are not yet covered.
For example: with the application of the Anti-Smoking Law, new companies emerged dedicated to conditioning and air conditioning the terraces of bars and restaurants.
Surround yourself with creative people, because everything is contagious, and creativity contributes to the generation of ideas.
Observe one’s own hobbies and hobbies and those of people
Be an ally of technology, and see that which is not diffused to its full potential of application.
For example, Internet security companies regain their prominence in the face of threats in the new cloud computing environments (cloud computing) and on mobile devices (smartphones, tablets, .)
Take advantage of your own experience as an employed person or training in a specific field. Knowledge of an activity and / or sector can provide business ideas and give the necessary security to become independent.
- Do the same differently.
- Reuse ideas that have been successful in other geographic markets or in other sectors.
Participate in Fairs, be in contact with Business Promotion Organizations, such as: ICEX, Chambers of Commerce.
- Be active in internet forums related to entrepreneur groups and follow their comments and opinions.
Read articles, publications, industry magazines, as well as listen to specialized programs on entrepreneurship offered by the media.
If we were to make an analysis of the emerging sectors of the 90s, currently, in which fields could we obtain a business opportunity?
Creativity And Innovation As A Key Factor In The Search For New Ideas
Every business idea must be differentiated and must have a high innovative component, which must not be limited to the original moment of the business but must be maintained throughout the life of the company.
Creativity can contribute to the generation of ideas that originate new innovative products, services or processes, but creativity should not be confused with innovation.
- Creativity contributes to the generation of new ideas.
- Innovation is the implementation of new and useful ideas.
We could say that innovation is the application of creativity to a certain aspect.
Being creative does not necessarily mean being innovative. Although it must be taken into account that a creative process is necessary to generate a large number of ideas for new and innovative business models, and identify the best ones; This process is often referred to as ideation.
Innovation is the introduction of new and useful ideas that allow creating new products and / or services or improving existing ones, and applying new processes in production or in the organization, in a continuous and customer-oriented manner .
Innovation is about challenging norms to design original business models that meet unmet, new, or hidden customer needs.
Innovation not only has to be associated with the product and / or service itself, it can germinate in any part of the company.
- Innovation can be associated with:
- To the product and / or service.
It can be understood as the creation of a new product and / or service, or adding new features to an existing one that consumers perceive as novel. An example would be the “tablet” (it emerges as the derivative of the laptop without keyboard or mouse), or 3D TV without the use of glasses, or “Amazon Web Services” (it was created from the retail infrastructure from amazon.com)
- To the process.
This type of innovation introduces a different way of doing things. It can be associated with any level of the company: marketing (for example: collective purchases over the internet or collective e-commerce), production (for example when a new form of restaurants was introduced: fast food; or the “Swatch” watch, which in order to continue offering Swiss quality at a competitive price, a large part of the manufacturing process was automated), management (with the introduction of new technologies, from hardware or different software that streamline work in administration).
The role of innovation is one of the critical success factors in a company, so the entrepreneur-entrepreneur must take into account a series of basic principles in relation to it:
Innovation must be the result of a systematic, organized and regular effort.
Innovation must start on a small scale, to gradually consolidate and expand.
The innovation must be simple and concrete, so that it can go from the conceptual to its materialization.
Innovation must aim at the leadership of the company that applies it, and at the generation of barriers that make imitation difficult.
