What Makes Something A Good Idea?

Generally , people prefer to talk in the language of ideas rather than problems.

Organisations don’t like admitting that they have lots of problems, but they sure are happy to tell you about all their brilliant ideas.

Ideas though, at least the good ones, have to be rooted in a problem. If your idea doesn’t solve a problem for someone, it’s useless.

Plenty of ideas fall down because:

• Not enough people share the problem
• The problem isn’t validated — it either doesn’t exist or hasn’t been defined well enough
• Someone else has an idea that has solved the problem better, faster or at far less cost.

The cost part is something we are doing much more thinking about at Bromford Lab.

Problems cost money, and problems require ideas to solve them. But ideas come for free, it’s the solutions that cost money.

This helps explain why we are more comfortable with ideas. Ideas are easy and don’t require anyone to put their hand in their pocket.

Problems and solutions both cost money.

What is the cost of the problem?

What is the cost of the solution?

Evaluating the cost of solution is relatively easy: you determine the time, money and resources you need to develop and implement it.

The cost of the problem, however, is the price of doing nothing. This is what most organisations ignore, and is why we don’t always pursue the best ideas.

A good idea needs the following:

A) The cost of problem fully understood

B) The cost of solution needs to be less than the cost of problem

C) There should be no easily available alternatives that are just good enough

D) It’s not a one shot (i.e it’s repeatable and people need the solution more than once)

Oh, and you need to find someone who thinks your solution is worth paying for.

That’s a really good idea.