The process of concept development

In practice the development of new ideas and concepts are often a quite chaotic process without a clear structure and specific phases.

If however you want a more structured understanding of the innovation process, I recommend a paper on Service Design written by Stefan Moritz.

The paper is a guided tour in the evolving field of Service Design, but a lot of the paper will be useful for developing new concepts in general. Especially because of the very practical outline of the different phases and because of the very rich appendix with loads of methods – but also because most products will have a service element, when they are brought to market.

For the general understanding of the phases of concept development I recommend pages 122-149 (+ maybe the case study on pages 85-109) and the appendix from page 185 to 238.

The process described is very similar to the process I am using in my lectures. Unfortunately that method is described in a book, that is only in danish: Vinderkoncepter by Søren Merit & Trine Nielsen, but if you read danish, I strogly recommend that book.

Know the people, you want to innovate for

One of the buzz-words in innovation these years is User Driven Innovation. In plain words user driven innovation is about developing things, that people need and like – and of course buy. The basic idea is to involve users in the innovations proces or observe them as preparation in order to get a deep and detailed understanding of the people, that we actually innovate for.

On Monday the 18th February we will take a closer look at different methods used in user driven innovation.

If you want to go a bit deeper in some of the methods, there is a brief description of 13 methods on Usability.gov. The descriptions is focused on testing web usability, but most of the methods can be applied in a lot of other contexts.

If you want to go really deep – more than necessary – you might want to read “Observing the user experience” by Mike Kuniavsky.

By the way, LEGO Mindstorms User Panel is a famous example of user involvement in the innovation proces.

Inspiration about consumer trends

If you want to study consumer trends, a couple of links might be of interest:

Trendswatching.com

Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies – and their downloable book Creative Man.

Two strategies in trendspotting

If you want to use Trendspotting as a way to find business opportunities, you may choose different strategies:

The general or the focused perspecktive

Taking the general perspective is about scanning the market and the world – or a general area - for any kind of trends, and use that as take off for the search of business ideas.

Examples:

Rising oil prices – maybe in combination with political attention on global warming. How will that effect the world politically, socially, technologically and economically etc.? And what will the world – or specific people – start looking for. What kind of new products, services or solutions will be neededj? Who will get what kind of pain?

Mobile phones spread rapidly in developig countries: Since mobile phones are becoming increasingly widespread in developig countries, a lot of people will go on the internet for the first time via mobile phones without ever having used a PC. How will communication i societies with a lot of mobile phones but few PC’s work? And what will people need, that is different from more developed countries.

The Focused Perspective

The above could lead you in a lot of different directions. And that is finde if you are indifferent about where you discover business opportunities. If however you are looking for business opportunities in a more specific area, you will probably want to search more focused.

Example:

If you are very interested in social media, virtual networks, Web 2.0 and that kind of stuff, you would probably want to look for trends in that area.

After the huge success of MySpace, LinkedIn and Facebook, where it has become a sport to have as many friends as possible, some people in the business have started talking about more focused and exclusive communities as the next big thing. People will get tired of being in huge networks with people the hardly know. The will search more narrow networks with people, with whom they have a lot in commen.

We have already seen the same trend in dating-websites, where new and more focused sites have come up – like Farmerdating, Fitnessdating and Beautiful People.

What kind of new opportunities do you see in that context.

Combine general and focused trenspotting

If you know, in which area you want to search for opportunities, you may want to start with the specialized focus. But to find surprising opportunities, it could be a good idea  to do the general search too. It might lead to nothing, but also to some surprising opportunities.

What do you see, if you take the trend towards more specialiced communities and the spreading of mobile phones with internet acces in developing countries?

Practical exercise: Tak a big sheet of paper. Draw three circles (one inside the other) and in the center you write trends in a specific area. In the second circle you write trends in related areas, and in the outsite you write trends in the world and society in general.

Start looking for opportunities – not ideas!

Don’t rush to getting ideas. A little patience and a good preparation will pay off later! We are only looking for opportunities in the beginning. 

After the first lecture we have already started looking for business opportunities, that can later transform into ideas. We had a short brainstorm on trends in different areas:

Environment – where we have new trends in political attention as well as industry and consumer behavior.

Web and software – where we have new trends in business and marketing as well as social and gaming activities.

Marketing – where new media are dominating and more general trends in society and in the world influence the media and the messages in marketing.

Real estate – where we have several relatively new markets in fx the Baltic states.

Design and innovation – where topics like ergonomics and customization seem to be important.

The point of starting out with this trendspotting-brainstorm was to turn your eyes to the world and be sensitive about what is moving – and where. We stared out very generally, and of course it is quite complicated to gain insight in the whole environmental area – from renewable energy sources to organic food – so it is time to focus.

 If the area, that you worked with in the trendspotting session is very general – like marketing or environment – i recommend, that you start focusing more narrowly on specific issues of interest. If your area is the web in general, “social networks” might be a specific focus.

Start reading specialized media, that write about your topic. Be careful with general media, they often wait until things are peaking. Danish media only recently started to really talk about Facebook – though it has been in the market for a long time.

And talking about social networks: If you know anybody, who work in the area, that you are interested in, don’t hesitate to contact them and get a feeling about what is moving out there. People in the battelfield hear the bombings before the media arrives.

So simply start making your own trendspotting brainstorm.

Welcome on board to new entrepreneurial students!

The journey towards the great and challenging life of an entrepreneur starts again with 33 new passengers. Welcome on board!

We start out from VIA University College in Horsens, Denmark, on 11th February 2008 and will reach our destination - a lot of brilliant business concepts – at the end of spring 2008.

 This blog will be a central meeting point on our journey with at least weekly posts and discussions.

 The blog was started in autumn 2007, and new passengers can enjoy the articles from the first course.

 During the course, students will be invited to contribute – so we will see what’s going to happen

Enjoy the journey!

How to succeed in sales and marketing…

ConnectDenmark – a network organization helping entrepreneurs finding investors – has publised a guide in marketing and sales for entrepreneurs.

It can be downloaded from ConnectDenmarks webpage.

Media strategy for PR

Optimizing your PR-effort is about choosing the right media, and choosing the right media is about deciding:

• Who should read your story?
• Who will print your story?

Choosing readers

If you want your potential customers to read your story, you should obviously find the media, that your audience read or watch. They will read probably read national as well as local media, and they will probably read general as well as more specialized media. Once you have a list of relevant media, you should look at the stories you can tell and consider, which media will be suited for which stories. I will come back to that in a minute…

However you also might want other people to read your story. Entrepreneurs I know have told me, how articles in the danish business newspaper Børsen have attracted investors or potential mentors or board members. Other entrepreneurs have had more applications for vacant jobs after local press coverage.

And I even know an team of entrepreneur, who broke the news about their invention in an early stage to tell potential competitors, that they were in the lead.

So you shouldn’t just se PR as a way of speaking to customers, but also as a way of speaking to potential partners or employees etc.

Choosing media

Choosing media is about looking at the story as well as the target group. In the printed media you can basically get PR in four different types of media:

Local media – the local or regional newspaper.

Industry media (or specialized magazines) – newspapers or magazines focusing on a specific industry or a very specific topic. There has been an explosion in magazines in recent years.

Business media – more general media focusing on business in general.

National media - nationwide media with a more general audience and with many different topics.

The media in general are in constant need of new stories, so if your story is relevant to the readers, you have a good chance of getting publicity. But remember, that the news in the national media will have to be relevant to a lot of people all over the country, whereas the local media can choose anything, that has just local interest. Again general business media will have to pick stories of very general interest to business people, where the more specialized industry media can pick stories, that are mainly relevant for their industry.

It is the most difficult to get access to national media, but don’t give up. Sometimes a way to get access to national media is via local media og industry media.  Media read media. Journalists are just as lazy as the rest of us, so if they can spot a story by reading fx a local paper or an industry magazine in stead of finding it the hard way, they will do it.

What’s your story…?

Free marketing is essential for entrepreneurs and new businesses. Buying ads and commercials can drain your startup budget before the first product or service is ever sold.

PR is the magic alternative. Getting journalists to write about you in their newspapers or magazines is not only free, but also more trustworthy than ads. And by getting publicity in articles, you avoid the ad-blindness, that many readers have developed.

The problem of course is, that you don’t control the media or the journalists – and you shouldn’t ever try to! Trying to push or persuade – or even bribe – journalists will cause repercussions.

In stead you should look for the interesting story, that a journalist might want to write or record and the newspaper, magazine or TV-channel might want to print or broadcast. The interesting story will be different in different media, but in general it has to be “news”. The journalist will look for stories that meet one or more of the following criteria:

• Importance
• Identification
• Sensation
• Current interest
• Conflict

Importance is when a story gives you insight and knowledge about big or smaller issues in society – and especially if the story influences society in general – and the reader in particular. How important the story should be, depends on the media. Local media will often print articles with only local interest.

Identification is about creating a story, where the reader recognizes his own life in the story. Avoid too abstract stories.

Sensation is about finding the extraordinary story. The classic example, that every journalist all over the world knows, is the difference between the headlines “Dog bites man” and “Man bites dog”. The first happens every day, but “Man bites dog” is unusual and extraordinary.

Current interest is about understanding what is interesting for readers right now. If your story relates to something happening right now or to fx a very hot political topic, you have a much better chance of getting through.  I expect that any story with relations to global warming will be printed right now…

Some topics have a long life cycle, and will have current interest for a long time, wheres other topics will only be interesting for a few days.

Conflict related stories are classical stories about heroes and villains – or The Little Man versus The System. Wars or neighbours fighting. Stories about who wins or who loses fx. sportmatches or elections. “The Lord of The Rings” is the ultimate conflict story – although a bit too long for a newspaper article – about the fight between good and evil.

If you can find an interesting conflict, you will make your article so much more powerful!

So what’s your story?

Networking online with other entrepreneurs

I know you have heard it before: Network is gold when you need to get information, that you can’t just find on the web after a few minutes search. To be able to contact somebody, who can tell you “the truth” about real life as soon as you ask for it.

And i know, that young entrepreneurs do not always have a huge network of relevant business people to contact. So what do you do….?

Finding an active entrepreneur forum is a good answer. From personal experience i know the danish entrepreneur forum Amino – founded by danish entrepreneur Martin Thorborg, founder of fx Jubii.dk and SpamFighter. If you don’t speak danish and are too much in a hurry to learn, there will be a lot of other forums out there, where you can participate to give and get help.

A quick search led me to a couple of apparantly active forums: YoungEntrepreneur and Entrepreneur Forum. Check the conditions for membership and try it out…