Creta ★'s Key Ideas from How to Run Your Business by The Book
by Dave Anderson

If you watch the news regularly with the conscious intent of coming up with a business idea, you'll be amazed at how many business opportunities your brain generates. Keeping up with current events will help you identify market trends, new fads, industry news - and sometimes just new ideas that have business possibilities.

The key to coming up with business ideas for a new product or service is to identify a market need that's not being met. For example, back in 2004 a Harvard University psychology student named Mark Zuckerberg recognized a need for a campus-wide social-networking website that would allow students and staff to share personal profiles and other information. He went on to develop Facebook and became one of the youngest billionaires in the world.

The difference between raw wood and finished lumber is a good example of putting a product through an additional process which increases its value, but additional processes are not the only way value can be added. You might also add services, or combine the product with other products. For instance, a local farm which sells produce also offers a vegetable delivery service; for a fee, consumers can have a box of fresh vegetables delivered to their door each week.

Focus on what products you might buy and what you might do to them or with them to create a profitable business.

Some business ideas aren't suited to local consumption - but appeal greatly to a foreign market. My own little town is surrounded by acres of wild blueberries. For years the bushes produced berries that mainly fed bears and birds; B.C. has a thriving blueberry industry that doesn't leave room for a wild blueberry market.

Finding out about other cultures and investigating other market opportunities is an excellent way to find business ideas.

You know what they say about the person who builds a better mousetrap. That person could be you! A local entrepreneur has created an improved version of the hula hoop; it's bigger and heavier so hula-hoopers can control it more easily and do more tricks. How did she come up with this idea? She thought hula hooping would be a fun thing to do with her daughter, but found the commercially available product too flimsy.

Start generating business ideas by looking at the products and services.

Write your ideas down. Let them swirl around in your head and coalesce. And keep an open mind and continue to assess everything you read and hear from an entrepreneurial point of view.

You don't want to run with the first business idea you think of; you want to discover the idea that's best suited to your skills and desires. Dream, think, plan - and you'll be ready to transform that business idea into the business you've always wanted.