Coming up with a great idea is a fantastic feeling that can make you feel like a genius (yelling “Eureka!” and running naked through the streets is optional). It’s the moment when that concept you’ve been mulling over in your mind finally comes into focus – something clicks and suddenly it all fits together: this could be huge!
While it can be a great psychological experience to have such a breakthrough, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the idea is a will be a success. Of course we’re somewhat biased toward our own ideas and even when we come up with something clever, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be realistically marketable or even doable, or that anyone else will see its merit.
If you spend a lot of time and resources developing an idea that doesn’t end up going anywhere, it could end up actually being quite damaging to your normal business/work, a big waste of time and money, or take away from developing a different idea that would have been more fruitful. So, how do you know before that point whether a specific idea is worth pursuing? Here we will look at different ways to quickly determine which ideas “could-go-all-the-way” and those that have fatal flaws that will likely be hard to overcome.
Show and Tell
![before there was powerpoint [insect convention presentation]](https://i0.wp.com/farm8.staticflickr.com/7071/7355459380_82c2759c57.jpg?resize=500%2C333)
The first and most obvious thing to do is to show your friends and others your idea and to chat about them. Make sure you only chat to people who won’t be likely to steal your ideas though, and don’t take anything anyone says too much to heart. While it’s a good idea to chat to other people so that you can get a perspective other than your own, you should note that their views won’t necessarily reflect the views of the wider public either – in other words don’t give up on your dream project just because one person doesn’t like it. Get a range of different opinions, weigh them wisely, and chat about how your concepts could be improved.
Do the Math
Chatting to people will give you some idea as to how receptive a market might respond to your new idea, but that doesn’t necessarily add up to real sales and real profit. What you need then are numbers so ask your focus groups how much they’d be willing to pay for your product, and whether or not they’d buy in the first place. Then look into how much it would cost to produce, how much you could realistically sell it for, the marketing and distribution channels and generally whether or not you could actually build a business model around it. In other words it’s no good coming up with a brilliant product that no one would buy, or that everyone would buy but that costs far too much to produce.
Prototypes
Another thing you can do is to create a prototype so that you can actually get to touch and manipulate the product. At the same time creating a prototype will take you through the design and construction process so that you become better aware of any potential obstacles. While you will still be devoting some time to building the prototype, you can learn a lot from the process and with modern technologies prototyping can often fit into a modest budget.
What to do With Your Untenable Ideas
During these processes it’s crucial to be completely honest with yourself and to be somewhat ruthless. Giving up on an idea you’re very proud of can be a painful thing to go through – it was your baby after all – but in my experience, the best decisions I’ve ever made in business were letting go of ideas I was strongly attached to, but didn’t think would make it in the long run. The savings in time and money can be tremendous.
Be ruthless with vetting your idea, but don’t see it as the end of the road. Just because an idea isn’t right yet, it might be useful in future when the market has progressed or when technology improves. Alternatively you might find that the idea doesn’t work on its own, but that it might be highly useful as part of a solution for a different product, or when combined with new ideas to create something slightly different. No need to throw it away…put it on the back burner and wait until all the other ingredients are in place for the right recipe.
