How Serial Entrepreneurs Get To Their Business Idea
The Serial Entrepreneurs Idea Framework
Published in
3 min readDec 11, 2015
We’ve interviewed a group of 16 of the world’s best serial entrepreneurs (see www.TheSerialEntrepreneurs.co) with the aim to find common patterns in their strategies and decision making. Based on the insights of the serial entrepreneurs, here is a framework that you can use to help find the right business idea that works for you.
New Experiences
- Make an effort to have new experiences and explore old ones. It could be some travelling, learning a new skill or going to exhibitions in completely unrelated sectors to what you’re normally used to.
- A change of scenery gets your mind out of its comfort zone and stimulates creative thinking. This could be something as simple as a countryside walk or a day out in a new town.
Talk to people
- Go to conferences and meetups on a wide variety of topics, and start talking to people you find there about what they’re involved in and the challenges they’re thinking about.
- Reach out to others working in a domain you’re exploring, or find experts in their fields. You’ll be surprised how keen they are to talk to you about what they’re doing and the interesting avenues for further research that this opens up.
- Find like-minded individuals who are also going through the ideation phase and are looking to start a business. They will bring unique perspectives on things you might not even have considered.
Read
- Consume and read everything and anything; newspapers, magazines in different sectors, books, blogs etc.
- Read up on market research to identify the latest trends and insights.
- Don’t get fixated on business guides or ‘how to make it rich’ books. While they may inspire you, they are unlikely you help you progress down the ideation route.
Build on what you know and love
- Based on the sector you’re already in, find something that can be done better. You’ll often have colleagues in that space who you could convince to join you.
- Do something you are passionate about. Do something that you love.
- Just remember that something you love, and that may even be a hobby, might not necessarily represent a real business opportunity.
Exercise new thinking
- Find ways to ‘come out of left-field’. Think unconventional thoughts.
- Do things that excite you and explore them! Something may just come out of it. Take a moment to create an oasis of time and space for consciously exploring things, then stop and let your unconscious mind do the work while you get on with other things for a while.
- Be instinctive. Sometimes you just seem to find the idea by trusting your instinct.
Want more?
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