Ideation: How ideas change and grow over time

I often find myself with a revolving door of ideas regarding how technology can solve life’s everyday problems. One of my crazier ideas is a completely distributed web, free of internet service providers and their throttling/censorship. One of my more sane ideas is a real-time location based subway alert system that is instantly accessible on your wrist. Ideas are not sequestered to the entrepreneurs or ‘creatives’ of the world. Everyone at one time or another thinks to themselves about how to solve a problem that they personally experience or a grand idea of how to push society further into the future. Many times it’s the entrepreneurs that are just crazy enough to think that they can pull off bringing their idea to fruition. I am one such crazy person.

I came across a problem of sorts about a year ago in the universe of fashion. A friend of mine had introduced me to a men’s fashion resale site called Grailed, the concept sounded simple enough to me ( Grailed is an online platform where I can buy used higher-end fashion items at a fraction of the cost, or sell my own pieces and recover some of my invested capital). The basic idea of the platform was nothing revolutionary, as there are other more established sites doing similar things already. However, when I went to the site I was immediately taken in by the design, functionality, and community that had been created and nurtured on the site. It was a modern and sleek take on how one views and deals in fashion. Grailed was born out of a community on Reddit, the community was built by those looking for a unique space where others shared the same passion for quality fashion items. Grailed solved this problem through a web and app platform customized to the communities needs. I immediately started looking to see if there was a women's version, as it turns out I could not find one (just recently, those who started Grailed came out with a women's version Heroine).

I researched other sites around the internet in search of something that offered the same solution for the female audience. Finding no such platform I promptly set about putting together what it would look like to build it myself. I am going to fast forward through the early parts of this process, to about 4 months later where we are actively working on a platform that offers women a space to sell, buy and interface with a dedicated fashion community across the world. The going was tough at this time, as it often is when you are trying to copy another’s idea, albeit for a different audience. The new site never took off, we tried many things to attract early users, such as content creation, sourcing our own inventory, and altering the look of the platform in small ways. By changing small things we entered one of the first phases of ‘ideation’ where you try changing small things to the main idea without using any feedback data or research, merely going off gut instinct. We tried these and many more tactics but to no avail. Fast forward another four months and we learned that trying to copy someone else’s solution to fit your idea is a lot harder than it looks, especially when bootstrapping. During this time two big changes occurred. First, the ‘we’ turned into an ‘I’ (my partner that I started out with stepped back from the project). Second, I trashed everything we had built. I boiled down the main aspects of the problems, that I myself have experienced and those problems that are widespread and known in the world of fashion. The problems your target consumers face must remain the focus of your idea evolution.

How engineers solve most problems they come across

Boiling down to the crux of the problem that your customers are facing is another key point in the ideation journey. The end solution does not matter as much as the pain points that your customer faces. Some of the pain points I found are: too much information, lack of personalization, and time consuming comparisons across the many channels of fashion. Drilling down to these points and creating a solution that would give the user value (saved time, personalization, etc) was the result of a long and arduous journey. One that I am most likely still on, and will be on till I move to the next crazy idea. I do not regret having to go through this process, as I have learned many valuable lessons along the way.

Here are 3 key lessons that I learned and will keep in mind while working through ideas on the path to their realization.

1. Talk with others about your idea and where you are at. If you stay in your mind, or only talk with others that think like you, you end up struggling to build something for 3 months that no one ends up wanting in the first place (Coming from some past experiences…)
2. Continue to iterate, do not stick to the main idea out of fear that straying will negate the reason you started. Use the process to weed out the main tenets of the problem that you are trying to solve, and use them as a guide to your idea and the end solution.
3. One of the more powerful lessons that I am still learning to this day is the idea of lean creation (A concept derived from The Lean Startup). I have a good amount of vision when it comes to what I see my solution becoming in the future, however, most of the time that vision gets in the way. I cannot build the entirety of it all in one go and expect it to take off. It needs to come in pieces and evolve over time to fit the user, slowly leading them in the right direction.

I am still working on my idea and its corresponding solution; it is a process and it will change again I am sure. I am starting a series of posts (this being the first) that will paint the journey of development that I am on. I will be touching on topics in technology, business development, marketing, and much more.

Feel free to share your ideation story or ask questions.