Idea Generation Exercise
Entrepreneurship, Winter
2
022
School of Business
Instructions:
· Complete all tasks.
· Each section carries the same weight. Your grade depends greatly on clear articulation. Please use complete sentences as much as possible in your responses. References are not necessary. The maximum length is seven pages, single-spaced.
· The purpose of this exercise is to help you experience and understand the fundamental process of creativity and idea generation in a slow motion. A creative process is inherently ‘messy’ and ‘imperfect’. As such, while you are going through the exercise, you might discover different ways to ‘associating previously unassociated fields’ and go beyond the basic process provided here to create new ideas. That’s great! Feel free to document it in the final reflection.
1. Let’s prepare some simple raw ingredients for generating new business ideas.
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List your three areas of expertise (e.g., skills, knowledge and/or resources that you have more than most people). |
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List two specific products or services that you are very familiar with. They do not need to be associated with your areas of expertise above. |
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List two key ‘pain points’[footnoteRef:1] in each of the products or services [1: A pain point refers to a specific problem a customer or the business is facing.] |
2. Now, we explore potential business ideas through the recombination creative technique
Recombining: Let’s create potential business ideas by combining ‘expertise’ and ‘pain points’. A pain point refers to a specific problem a customer or the business is facing. Essentially, we explore the possibilities of leveraging your individual expertise to address the key pain points in certain markets. Please complete the following tables.
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[enter pain point #1 of first product/service] |
[enter pain point #2 of first product/service] |
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[enter your areas of expertise] |
Think/write down how your areas of expertise might help address the pain point, in doing so, create a business |
… |
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[enter pain point #1 of second product/service] |
[enter pain point #2 of second product/service] |
Takeaways
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Are there any potential business idea(s)? Please write down at least two ideas based on your exercise. |
3. We conclude by summarizing one potential business idea of your choice based on the exercise above. Note, you are welcome to continue to create more ideas. But for this exercise, only one ‘best’ idea/articulation is required.
‘Best’ Idea
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Please formally describe your ‘best’ idea within 50 words. |
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What ‘pain point(s)’ will it address in what market? |
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What key expertise, technologies and resources are important to this idea? |
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How does your area(s) of expertise can help develop this idea? |
4. Let’s conclude with a short reflection. Describe what caught your attention in the exercise. Elaborate your feelings and/or views on what caught your attention. Appropriately 150-250 words in length will be appropriate.
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