This is it. What it’s all about. I created the baseline for my activities. Check out the journey through which I want to support you. If you find yourself somewhere in there you may want to send in some questions to the Query Solver so I can figure out your custom solutions.
Google idea to business and you’ll find a million and one blog posts giving you the five to twelve steps to success, depending on the author’s philosophy on post length. Naturally, I decided this topic needed one more post. I’m not going to tell you how you are starting a successful business, I’m taking you on a journey to figure out solutions as we go while learning from each other. People of ideas, this blog is for you! To start with, I thought it cannot suffice to steal from the other blogs and create a hybrid of them. So, I read through lots of them and decided none of them suits me enough to be quoted here. I added my own journey so far and what I’ve learned from other pre-entrepreneurs and mixed it with the Design Thinking process.
Don’t worry if that doesn’t yet make a lot of sence to you. Essentially, I diverged to allow for the inclusion of all relevant stages. Later, I will show that I synthesized and hence tied things together and structured them again – something I learned from design thinking. Depicted below you find one way of defining a design thinking process.
Source: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/design-thinking/
The Baseline
Why am I telling you all this? To show you some of the thinking behind what’s to follow. In any case, what came out of this process is a description of the journey we go through until our idea is a full-fledged project in motion. The idea journey. It could be defined in a zillion different ways, of course. Think of the steps as loose categories to pinpoint where you are stuck and facilitate your search for a solution. I will hereforth create posts that fit into these categories, so the answers aren’t necessarily in this post, they are an ongoing process that will not stop until Ragnarok! Here we go.
X. Business, User, Technology & YOU!
This process isn’t necessarily a linear or chronological one. It is highly iterative (if you do it right) and there are more dimensions to it than visible in the process. In design thinking, it is crucial to keep the triangle of business, user and technology in mind. This means that we constantly ask our customer for feedback, make sure what we’re doing is viable and that we are on top of technological needs. Depending on your idea, you can replace technological needs with emotional intelligence or whatever it is that is critical to making it happen. Ideally, you want to be in the sweet spot where all three domains are satisfied. That’s where innovation happens, that’s where awesome ideas are born, that’s where you find your Atlantis.
What I don’t read often enough when researching entrepreneurship and startup content is YOU! Why are you on this journey? No business has ever grown of a stagnant initiator. Expand your knowledge, learn something new, sharpen your skills, train your mind, practice emotional intelligence, identify your weaknesses and strengths and act on your conclusions. Self-development is sort of a trendy term that’s used mostly spiritually. Realistically, it is the fundamental building block on which you build your castle. Even if you aren’t thinking long-term business with your idea. Say, you just want to expand on your hobby a little bit. Just a little visibility so others can see what you’re doing. Wouldn’t it make sense to maximise your personal benefit from doing so? However, that doesn’t happen automatically. It happens when we reflect and build ourselves actively.
Cool, so much about the omnipresent critical success factors for your idea. Let’s take a walk through the process.
1. Align your Interest
There we are. At the beginning of everything and nothing. At the heart of innovation, listening to the silence before the storm. This is where you stop and think, what is it that I want to be doing? Could be that your school is forcing you to do a project, could be that you have a spare evening in your week that you want to fill with something meaningful, could be that you’re sick and tired of the routine and want to break out. Could be that you just had an idea. Whatever the motivation, you have to start somewhere and that can already be the toughest part of your journey! There is one simple way of finding out whether you are going down the right road. Talk to people about your idea. How much do you care about their skepticism? How much energy do you derive just from talking about doing it? Listen… and you should know. By the way, all the doubt that’s mixed in is a sign that you’re doing it right. Okay, if you pass that test (consider that this is probably the only time you get to grade yourself) get started.
More is to follow, of course, and it is a great start to know what you want to do for whom and why. Why. I’m sure it has been quoted on you before and I think Simon Sinek merits to be quoted on you again! If you aren’t sure whether your passion is strong enough to pursue your idea, maybe what you need is some structure around what you’re about to do and why. In any case, he is super inspiring. Check out his Tedx talk below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4ZoJKF_VuA
Alright, I hope you feel enlightened or at least stimulated. Use that! Aligning your interst isn’t just about finding a passion, it is about coming up with an idea. If you were to speak at a Tedx event five years from now, what would you talk about? Be very clear on why you want to pursue your idea and how far you mean to take it. Why do people need what you have to offer?
This is where creativity comes into play. All these ideas, approaches, wants and passions. Let them flow out and collect them on humanity’s greatest invention – a blank piece of paper. Okay, you’ll probably use some gadget. Still, you get the meaning of this. If you need some input for the techniques to use, check out these 10 Creative Techniques.
What this first step is all about is aligning your interest with the needs of your target group. At the very beginning, your passion meets empathy! I made this a true statement and you should be painfully aware that it is up to you whether it holds water in your case. If not, may [insert deity of your choice] have mercy on thy idea.
Alright, it seems to me that this is a lot to take in. So, let’s split the post in two. Continue here.
Source header image: https://www.vactualpapers.com/wallpaper/an-idea-strikes
