Every great achievement in mankind starts with an idea. An idea which the inventor or the thinker believes in totally. Take for instance, Coca Cola. Coca Cola started as an idea from a pharmacist in Atlanta, Georgia - Dr. John Pemberton in May 1886.
When businessman Asa Candler bought the formula for Coca Cola, sales of the carbonated beverage took off because he had great faith in the product and invested money into it. With Candler's vision and determination, the Coca Cola is now a known brand the world over. As the cliche goes, the rest is history.
How to Generate Ideas
How do these visionaries generate such unique ideas for products and services? Generating ideas for your business is not that difficult. Basically there are four steps to come up with creative ideas:
1. Search for an idea
2. Design value or change information to create new ideas
3. Acceptance of the idea
4. Implementing the idea
Search for an Idea
Generation of an idea requires that you gather as much information as you can in order to come up with several ideas. Collect all data without discrimination even seemingly useless information. Let your curiosity flow freely.
Design Value of Ideas
This pertains to the ability of the ideas to be transformed or designed into new ones. Come up with new ideas based on the information collected. Take the case, for instance, of this 21-year old British student, Alex Tew who came up with a unique idea of making a website that sells a million pixels at $1 each.
Tew wanted to go to college but could not afford the £30,000 tuition fee. So one night, he brainstormed for ideas that could bring in money. Since he has some ideas on graphics and websites, he came up with the idea of selling pixels. He launched the website August 2005 and months later he earned $1 million. Tew merely changed old information to come up with new ideas. And the innovation paid off big time for him.
Acceptance of an Idea
The acceptance of an idea stage is when you choose which of the ideas is the best then try it out for yourself. Acceptance is at the point when you manufacture the item and actually sell it to test the customers' reactions. Acceptance by the customer is a necessary ingredient in the acceptance stage. Take for instance McDonald's.
When it first started to serve breakfast, the idea did not take off immediately. It lost money for four years. This is because customers were accustomed to taking breakfast at home. Later, customers began accepting the idea of having breakfast in McDonald's and now it is one of the most profitable segment of the company.
However, to wait for four years for customers to accept your product would require a lot of financial resources and confidence in the business idea. The creative design process often requires that the new idea is at all levels because it would be difficult to introduce something that others are not sure of.
Implementing the Idea
Implementation stage would be to make the new idea or concept or product a part of the company is offering. This is past the acceptance or test stage. When the idea is able to pass the test and is gaining acceptance then the next move would be to implement it continuously. This is the point when the company makes a choice to continue the idea or abandon it altogether. In order for the idea to be successful, it must offer value to the customers.
At the same time, implementers must see to it the the expected value of the idea is realized in the market place. The four steps enumerated would definitely help any business come up with new unique ideas that could differentiate them from competitors and give them an edge. In times of economic difficulties, these edge could spell the difference between survival and untimely demise of the business.
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