It is likely that you have already decided to some extent what business you would like to start. However you may be at the stage where you would welcome the opportunity to run your own business but are not sure in which direction to go.
You may generate some business ideas from here and consider them in relation to your own motivation interest, needs, skills and resources.
There are There are a multitude of business opportunities to choose from, ranging from home-based ideas such as furniture repairs, dress and curtain-making or growing decorative plants, through offering standard services such as domestic cleaning car repairs, painting and decorating, to running a shop, restaurant, rest home or hotel. Maybe you are considering something larger, preenting a more difficult challlenge, such as manufacturing.
There are no ‘magic formulas’ for generating business ideas. However, the following activities will help you draw up a range, all of them proving more fruitful if you attempt them with a friend.
Building on your skills, hobbies or interest
Take five minutes to list as many of your interests and skills as you can think of. For each, try to think of a business idea to match it. For example:
Hiking - Guided Country walks
Cooking - Home catering; restaurant
Meeting people - Retailing
Copying or improving somebody else’s successful idea
It is a common fallacy that for a business to be a success it must be based on an innovative and original idea. In fact the opposite can be true: the less the idea has already been tried and tested by other entrepreneurs, the greater the element of risk.
Make a list of the businesses in your area that appear to be successful. Do any appeal to you?
Can you improve on any already established businesses? For the existing businesses that appeal to you, try to make a list of the things that they do badly. How could you alter that business to improve on it?
Combining two existing business ideas
An interesting activity is to attempt to combine two or more existing business ideas to produce a new concept. One well-known and highly successful example of this was the ‘Body shop’. The Body Shop offers mainly ‘beauty products’ made from natutral ingredients without cruelty to animals.
It was started in 1976 with one shop; it is now a very successful business with shops worldwide.
The body shop is basically a combination of the traditional herbalists with the cosmetic business, integrated in such a way as to capitalize on the recent trend towards healthier life-styles and public resentment and concern about cruelty to animals.
Spotting a gap in the market
Many of today’s successful business people have got whee they have by identifying and exploiting a ‘gap’ in a fast growing market. It is a matter of identifying needs of sections of the market which are presently not met by existing businesses.
Richard Branson’s Virgin Airlines established itself by meeting the need of a large section of the traveling public for cheap air travel.
Spotting a gap in the market is not necessarily easy. You can try to identify current trend. Having identify the trend, try to translate them into possible business ideas, by identifying a possible market need each suggest and a business idea the feasibly might meet that need.
Example
Increase in single parent families - Occassional freedom from pressure of looking after their children
- Baby sitting service
- Safe transport and supervision of children to and from school
- Setting up town centre nursery
With these few methods, you should be able to find a suitable business idea.
