September 16, 2010

Entrepreneurs don’t wait until they have their “eureka moment” to start a business. In fact, most of the truly successful businesses are not new ideas, but a fresh approach to an old business:

Groupon did not invent the deal-of-the-day business when they launched in 2008. Most credit Woot as having started the phenomenon in 2004 -- Groupon just put a fresh spin on the model by focusing on local retailers in a specific city.

Lululemon Athletica is in the business of selling comfortable sportswear. They happened to use a yoga vibe to peddle their comfy pants.

Five Guys did not invent the hamburger joint, they just super-sized it.

Google didn’t invent the search engine, they just made searching for stuff better than it was with Yahoo!

Apple did not invent the laptop (the IBM 5100 was first), they just made it better.

Salesforce.com allows you to access your contacts through a web browser, but they didn’t invent customer relationship management software.

In my own case, I had an idea for an audio tapes series (yes, before CDs died, and a decade before iPods) to broadcast the stories of successful entrepreneurs. The tape series flopped but I was able to salvage some of the demo reels, which I sent to a radio station that liked the concept. My radio show led to a nationally syndicated feature. One of the show’s sponsors, RBC Royal Bank, asked for my opinion on how the entrepreneurs I was interviewing would react to an advertising campaign they had planned. I gave them my thoughts and that morphed into a consulting company that provided advice to large companies targeting small business. I then tweaked the consulting model to a subscription business, which was acquired by The Corporate Executive Board (NASDAQ: EXBD) in 2008. 

My idea of a tape series was a dud but I never would have figured out a tenable business model had I not taken that clumsy, awkward first step.

Mark Zuckerberg did not envision a social network of 500 million users when he hacked into Harvard’s mainframe to set up the now-famous “hot or not” online voting platform which would ultimately morph into Facebook.

So if you’re still waiting for your “killer idea”, stop.  The most successful entrepreneurs make small incremental improvements to existing ideas. They place a premium on starting, learning and adapting. They go when they are 80 percent of the way there and use the feedback of the market to get them the rest of the way.

Related Topics

• Innovation

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John Warrillow, Article, innovation, business model, entrepreneurs, Groupon, Small Business Trends, Lululemon, Google

Join the conversation ( 2 )

• Mark Copeman 1 year 7 months and 15 days ago

  

  Ideas are two a penny - it's all about the execution in my book. Some great people to learn from in this area - especially when it comes to developing an online business is 37 Signals. They have a book called Getting Real which has inspired us so much - we built an online diary around taking the idea and turning it into an online business...Why not follow along!www.watchusgettingreal.com

• Adam Hoeksema 1 year 8 months and 16 days ago

  

  I recently wrote this article on my blog www.theexecutiveplan.com titled, "How to Know if Your Business Idea is a Winner"So you have this great idea for a new business. How do you know if your business idea stands a chance to be successful? Well there are 2 essential elements in any successful business. There is a BIG problem. You have a UNIQUE solution. Let me elaborate on those two points.1. Big Problem - When you explain the value of your idea to your friends and family do they say, "Yeah I *** it when that happens"? If so, you probably have the first ingredient of a successful business. Don't get me wrong, the problem does not have to be felt by "everyone", because maybe every farmer has difficulty finding the best buyer for their crops. Well your mom may not know that, but every farmer does. So the key is to find a problem that is a big pain for a specific group of people. I am going to use the example of the remote vehicle starter. What a GREAT idea. Everyone that has ever traveled in a car on a blistering hot summer day or a bitterly cold winter morning understands how terrible it is to wait for your car to cool down or heat up. The remote vehicle starter is a great idea because everyone understands the pain.2. Unique Solution - This is the problem that I usually run in to. I am an idea generator. I have a unique ability to identify a big pain that impacts a group of people, but that is usually where it ends for me haha. For instance, just about anyone could recognize the pain of commercials in the middle of your favorite television program, but I sure could not come up with a unique solution like TIVO. Even if I thought about TIVO as a concept, I have no expertise to create the software and hardware for the program. So the second, and often the most difficult piece of building a successful business is creating a unique solution to the big problem.