Starting With A Good Idea
Exploring
Business Opportunities
Evaluating Your
Ideas
Protecting Your
Idea |
The First Step: Develop
several ideas from your concept. Many people think that
all you need to start a business is one good idea. While that
can sometimes be true, the best foundation for business
success is to have several possibilities for creating profits.
If the main idea does not test out well, an alternative is
available to be tried. It is a worthwhile exercise to explore
additional products, services, procedures and processes that
may enhance your initial idea. This section provides you with
forty concepts that may help you with this process. Some
business people are skilled at carrying out this process on
their own, while others may want to assemble a "team" - people
with different talents and skills who can interact to produce
useful ideas and evaluate their potential. Ongoing business
success is often linked to the ability to produce ideas on a
continuing basis, testing each to determine its suitability.
This process ensures that a business stays in touch with the
real opportunities of the marketplace.
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The
Second Step: Evaluate your ideas. Identifying business
opportunities requires an approach that combines systematic analysis
with unstructured creativity. Remember that it is always cheaper to
examine an idea thoroughly in advance than to incur the expenses of
a business failure.
The
Third Step: Prepare a business plan. You have now
selected an opportunity as the basis for a new business venture.
There are several reasons for preparing a thorough business plan
before you proceed.
Why
prepare a plan?
- The business
plan identifies the amount and the type of financing or outside
investment required.
- A plan makes
it easier for a lender or investor to assess you and your
proposal.
- It encourages
realism.
- It helps you
to better identify your customers, your market, your pricing
strategies and the competitive conditions under which you must
operate to succeed.
- It improves
your ability to manage your business.
- A business
plan provides an outline of your short term and long term business
goals.
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