Generate a Million Ideas Quickly

Stumped For Business Ideas 

Here is a really easy way to generate a million ideas in approximately 30 minutes.

This technique can be used for a brainstorming session, with others, as a warm up exercise.

The Process 

Write across the top of the page (paper, white board or spreadsheet):

What can I sell, to whom, where, when, how and for how much.

Under each of the highlighted 6 headings write everything that comes to mind.

Stocktake

You will now have six column headings for each of the ideas and easily up to 10 ideas under each of the topics.

Now we come to the interesting part!

Generating a Million Ideas

What we do now is take possible combinations of what you have written in each of these columns (the “what, who, when, where, how, how much” columns) and string them together as a business idea.

For example, you might have “gourmets buying Asian food at a pop up market each weekend with a mobile kitchen in a caravan, charging very high fees”.  This is a combination of one item from each of the columns.

We now come to the million ideas.

String together ideas using elements from each column. You will come up with some proposals that are plausible as business ideas, some better than others.

For example:

Assumption – you have 10 ideas under each of the 6 words.  

That is 10 to the power of 6 = 1 million.

If you link every combination of these words in each column together you will generate 1 million ideas in under 30 minutes.

Not every one of these combinations is going to be attractive.

Mission to Date:

Throw everything against the wall.  

Next Step:

See what will stick – what has merit.

In each of the 6 columns, write (H), (M), (L) against each alternative.  

This represents (H)igh, (M)edium and (L)ow attraction to you.  

This is a quick process if there is a reasonable amount of experience within the group in the subject area.

Serious research is not likely to be needed at this stage; intuition (the gut) will likely do the job. If you miss-code a few, they are still there to followup later.

Go to the FULL ARTICLE for the next steps.

Outcome 

You have generated all the possible ideas that you can think of.

You have removed those which you consider inappropriate or not what you want to do.

What is left, are plausible ideas for you to further refine.

Did you have any idea that you could create 1 million business ideas in 30 minutes? 

This exercise clearly shows that you can.

Watch The Video Now

Bill Gross has founded a lot of start-ups, and incubated many others — and he got curious about why some succeeded and others failed.

He gathered data from hundreds of companies, his own and other people’s, and ranked each company on five key factors. He found one factor that stands out from the others — and surprised even him.

Watch this six minute TEDx video
on the link below

The Single Biggest Reason Why Start-ups Succeed
 

More on 12Faces

12Faces is a Not-For-Profit founded by Scott Williams to fulfil a long held ambition to help other Managers access valuable business ideas on how to improve.

12Faces distills the best available Profit Growth tips from leading authors and presents it to you in an easily digested format. 

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