Research - How to Generate an Idea

A common misconception is that you have to have an "unique" idea. Have you wondered although they are all supermarkets, Wal-Mart, Superstore, Safeway, Save-on-Food or Costco can coexist?

Idea generation is more about understanding what are the current market demands. If, at a short period of time, there are hundreds of similar ideas (or clones) in a market, most likely, there is a huge demand in this area. For example, after the launch of the location-based social network - Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, and many more similar sites also emerge. Most of them are on the blink of massive expansion.

It is easy to disregard an idea since you may think it already "exists". The fact is that it is very hard to generate a completely unique idea. Even if you think you have come up with one, competition is going to come up the next day and make your idea not unique. And if the "unique" idea does not exist in the market, it may also mean that there is no demand to it. The concept here is that if there is a sudden surge of a particular idea, most likely, it's a great idea with potentially huge demand.

Here are some examples:

• Tablets - iPad, Blackberry playbook, Samsung Galaxy tablet, Motorola Xoom, LG Optimus
• Location-based Networks - Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, Yobongo, Google Latitude, Geomium

Please refer to Research - Generating Ideas and Building Reliable References for how to gather useful idea sources.

Since this blog is about building an online website, we will use the location-based social network as the references.

When you have a few reliable sites, spend sometime to use these sites and really join the community and understand the concepts behind it. A site does not become successful for no reason. Convince yourself that these sites are indeed unlocking a hidden human demand - the desire to connect with others. You will want to check out the article Mass Mingling from Trendwatching.

When you are using these reference sites, try to note the following:

• the description/slogan of each site
• why they can co-exist with each other (You will probably find that these sites are very similar, often with just a slight twist.)
• features of each site and how they name the feature (Naming the feature in a particular way will give you an edge in marketing and bring users enthusiasm)
• how the site can be improved? 
• what can be simplified to make it more user friendly

You will want to organize the above into spreadsheets

Here are some suggestions on how to come up with a similar idea:

• Apply a similar idea in a different demographics/country/language/"subset of audience"
• Take one successful feature of the reference site and expand it into a specialized idea (Plancast VS Facebook Events)
• Copy the same site but make it more convenient and more user friendly

Even if you just copy exactly the same idea, it is fine. The important take-away is as long as you are up-to-date with the industry, when a trend just emerges, there is no dominate player in this field yet.

In summary, the steps to generate an idea is as follows

• keep yourself up-to-date with trends and what's happening in the industry (RSS reader with reliable trending feeds on a smart phone)
• note down all the sites of your interest
• pick one area and select a few sites as your reference sites
• start using these sites as a regular user and try to mingle with the community
• note all the common features (if all these sites are using these features, chances are you will need these features too)
• note all the differences in features and the branding/naming of the features (these are why the sites can coexist)
• convince yourself there is indeed a demand and it is a new emerging trend

Tips: You will want to organize everything in a spreadsheet.

Quote of the day: "Innovate, Improve, Copy or Perish!".