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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Being a business owner in Denmark….

For startup companies in Denmark there are several websites dedicated to give information to startups – but only a few in english. Probably the best practical guide in english is 100svar.dk ( “100 ansvwers”).
Check it out to see if it contains relevant information for your business plan.

Quick trendspotting

Trenspotting is a great way to get inspiration for new business ideas, but don’t spend too much time on making y0ur own research, when there are a lot of other people out there gathering information – and keeping eyes open.
Trendwatching.com collects information on trends from 8000 users. They are not necessarily professionals, but they probably [...]

Inspiration for business ideas

After a quick warm up in the first couple of lectures, we are now entering the phase of creating business ideas. Our own brainstorming might lead to “the next big thing”, but why not get inspired from what others have already thought.
Springwise.com has 8000 users spread around the world to spot new business ideas, that [...]