Article: From an idea to a business plan - Scaling up

Entrepreneurship

From an idea to a business plan - Scaling up

People get easily accustomed to new things. As if it is nature of human beings to be in search of always new adventures. If your idea is totally new to your target group, there is high probability that may come enticing to them.
From an idea to a business plan - Scaling up

How to know an idea is worth to go for it or take it to the next levels for a business plan? Here is an easy to catch and memorable formula for you to assess your ideas for a successful business plan.

Value

Ideally what we do in personal or professional life is about to create values for ourselves or others. I subtract exploiters from this list. We work to introduce products or service to help people to meet their needs. If we are in attempt of providing those products and service in a more affordable and quality of way, this will result in save in time, effort and money. Foremost, what is important is whether our target group perceives these attempts as a value or not. People will perceive them as a value if they;

- satisfy one or more of target group`s core human desires (desire to acquire, bond, learn, defend, feel) and as a result people needs.

- offer an attractive and easy to visualize end benefit.

- facilitate people`s efforts and hassle.

- provide your target social signals (social status) and make them feel special. (The Personal MBA, Josh Jaufman, Portfolio Penquin, 2012, p64.)

Afterwards, people can set more time aside to their families and beloved ones thanks to those savings we enabled for them and these are values we added their life. So, what I want you to do is to ask yourself underlined questions to determine your idea`s values to your target group. Moreover, you can be convinced by answering these questions. 

Is it a great solution to the common problem of your target group?

“Great businesses are places where problems are solved and lives are improved” – Richard Branson.

What majority of people struggle from an issue is key to detect and find a solution. If you have analyzed your target in detail, you must have already found out their common problems. Like the example of above, let`s say, you developed an innovative product which can lead to earn someone extra time and that someone utilize that time spending with his family or hanging out with friends. One helpful method of defining common problem is to gather information about their general and specific needs (perhaps over Maslow Needs). You can take a look at the activities, tasks and event performed by target group. Anyway, your idea should figure out these lacks of needs and ease tasks. Any extra save in time, effort and money will seem them as a value in terms of friendship, family, mankind and socialization.

Put yourself in their shoes, think no one's come up with this idea and someone tells that to you, would you go for it? 

Believe it or not, it is easy to bring ideas to light. To believe it solely is easier rather than to feel it on your own. Empathy. This incredibly beneficial tool can be referred in several areas. In this case, pretend that you are unaware of your claimed idea, how would you react that? Would you use that product or service and benefit from it? How much are willing to pay for that? Be realistic and even if it is painful, you have to stand it for continuity of your ideas, otherwise in the following steps you will get hurt more dramatically than used to. 

Innovation

“The heart and soul of the company is creativity and innovation” – Bob Iger.

Cutting-edge technologies, buildings, goods are just the products of innovative ideas. Innovation varies as a first try in company, industry or market. You can apply current ideas to existed industries over a new way, that itself can be called innovative. Even this age requires differentiation and diving to new oceans and water. To understand broadly, you can search about “Blue ocean” theorists.  You will get it well after seeing the questions below.

Is your idea of product or service and so on totally new to your targeted group?

People get easily accustomed to new things. As if it is nature of human beings to be in search of always new adventures. If your idea is totally new to your target group, there is high probability that may come enticing to them. If possible, rather try to develop completely new innovations to shock your target group. However this process takes long time and effort, even in the end, you may be disappointed.

Or you wish to initiate a current one through an innovative way and style?

It is not a have-to to come up with totally innovative ideas, if you are good at aligning current prosperous ideas with diversity of your target group, go ahead. But be careful in analyzing your target group, any little deviation can cause catastrophic failures. Sometimes, people can go for ideas finding fancy comprehensive ways to introduce it to the market. You can introduce current product or service with differentiated and distinct new way of production, marketing and management style. Take example of Zappos. Zappos didn`t invented new goods. It is traditionally well-known shoes. What makes Zappost attractive is that it serves these shoes with revolutionized customer relations system. “delivering happiness”. 

Perspective

There is no static all-time acceptable metric for success across the world. Cultures, habits, expectations, needs, mindsets are distinctive and changing. This gets more diversified in time. To make your idea sustainably perspective, you should take into account place and period factors just like these:

-Place

1. What is the starting point of your idea in terms of place?

“Don't make the process harder than it is” – Jack Welch.

If you do not know where to get started, you might struggle for the rest, so select your place to start wisely. Again, get to the analysis of your target. This time, try to find out where they commute, walk, drive, ride and live. Try to find a place that makes their lives more valuable by shortening their time for errands, eliminating road-related security risks. Briefly, remember of rules of saving in time, effort and money.

2. What is the growth range of your idea in terms of place?

“Don't be in a rush to get big. Be in a rush to have a great product” – Eric Ries.

Some products and services still have a long way to move forward, some not. Let`s say, your idea is a great solution to current common problem in a certain area and you started it and prospered. Later, your idea to take it to the next levels becomes frustrating. Because, your solution is specific to that area or target and for other places, it has no longer possibility to enlarge your idea. If you have a vision to make your idea broadly acclaimed, take care of its growth range of place for distant future. Most important, keep quote above in mind not to constraint your thinking of place notion.

-Period

1. What is the starting point of your idea in terms of time?

“Timing is everything when you really ready for it, it will come” – Mandy Hale.

Timing. To some, it is the most critical factor to initiate anything. Apparently, success stories of flagship products of Apple and giant companies lie behind this factor. They are excellent at knowing best time to introduce them. What you need to do is to consider your assets in that moment to manage your idea and target group`s assets to afford your idea.

2. What is the growth range of your idea in terms of time?

“Innovation is only innovation when it is sustainable” – Donald Clark.

I assure you, as in the example of place factor, some ideas are promising, therefore people will always need your idea (solution). Do not let your idea last temporarily. Look for permanent and sustainable ideas (solutions) that people may always take advantage or benefit from them all the time. So always find new ways to refresh or improve your ideas.

To cut it short, if your ideas are valuable, innovative and perspective according to above-mentioned questions, then it is ready to get turned into a business plan ready to go ahead.

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Topics: Entrepreneurship

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