How to brainstorm for good business ideas

If you have decided to start a venture and be an entrepreneur, you'll need good business ideas.

I would like to suggest 4 ways to brainstorm to spot good opportunities:

Building on your skills, hobbies or interests
Copying or improving on an existing successful business
Combining two existing business ideas
Spotting a gap in the market

Use this tool to do brainstorming.

Building on your skills, hobbies or interests
I like this way of finding an opportunity the most. Build upon your passion and do what you really like. After all, your are embarking your own journey.

Take 5 minutes and make a list of all your interests, skills or experience. For each, think of one or more business idea to match it. Here is a list you might make:

Interest/Skills/Experience	Business idea
Cooking	A restaurant for fusion food Recipe Blog Cooking school
Meeting people	Taxi proprietor Freelance Insurance Retail business
Volleyball	Volleyball Blog Volleyball coach proprietor Sports shop
Cancer patient	Found a social enterprise Blog that provides resources for fellow cancer patients Match patients to doctors service

Copying or improving on existing successful idea
You need not have a radical innovation to take the market by storm. Look at iPod, Apple had to pay Creative off for intellectual property infringement, (nice words for copying).

Prior to this, Microsoft had copied the Graphic User Interface concept from Apple. In both cases, it was the copycat that won the business war.

Consider the area you want to go into. How can you improve the existing product or service or solution? Can you alter any business processes?

In June 2008, Facebook paid $65m to Mark Zuckerberg’s ex-classmates in Harvard to settle the ConnectU controversy. ConnectU claimed that Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, had copied their ideas.

Make a list of businesses in your interest area that are successful. Alter, amend or add-on to the idea to come up with your own.

Combining two or more existing business ideas
If you are interested in more than one business area, how about combining two or more existing business ideas and make it into an interesting one?

For example, if you like cooking and you love picnics, how about a business that delivers picnic food to the picnic site on weekends? That’s just a random idea from me. I am sure you can think up better ones.

But see how I combined 3 ideas? Cooking, Picnic and Food Delivery.

If you can spot a gap by combining existing ideas, your business proposition will be even more compelling. Read on…

Spotting a gap in the market
Identify a need of the market that is not currently being served by existing businesses.

Spotting a gap is not easy! First, try to identify a current national or international trend. To do this, you’ve got to read newspapers, magazines and periodicals to get updated.

Once that’s done, then translate each of these into possible business ideas. Here is a quick list I put together:

Trend	Need	Possible business idea
Financial institutions failing and needing bail outs	An alternative or more transparent financial institution	Alternative banking or payment systems
High unemployment rates and people now have time!	Live on shoe-strong budget Spend their time productively	Cheaper essential products Gym, self-improvement courses Import cheap and essential goods from Asia
Increase in divorce and single-parent families	Help to look after children	Baby-sitting service After school care service Home delivery of nutritious food for children

My current favorite business idea is "a car that does not use any fuel"! (Obvious, isn’t it?)

There is a clear need for this and there is nobody (or very few) out there working on it. This could be an excellent business idea.

Not feasible? Of course not! This brings me to my next point.

Business ideas are cheap
Yep, so forget about trying to sell your fantastic business idea or trying to protect it at this stage.

What do you do with the business idea? Test it out. Borrow Nike’s fantastic slogan: Just do it!

As you explore and work upon your business ideas, you will find out what works and what does not. Be innovative and nimble. Don’t be afraid to keep changing and modifying your idea.

It will come a point in time you find that sweet spot – a match between what you thought is a great business idea and one that can be monetized.

Download my Brainstorming tool here.