There are many ways to develop a business idea. Often a good idea comes to you in the shower. Or while solving a task in everyday life, you suddenly have a thought about how this task can be solved much better than before. But since you don’t want to wait for a sudden flash of inspiration, we will use different methods that will help your creativity to take off. Read them through at your leisure and see what appeals to you. Apply different methods until you have developed an idea that you are so enthusiastic about that you don’t want to look any further but want to implement it. You will feel it when you have found IT!

You can use most of the methods on your own, but it would be very helpful if you have one or more people who participate. This brings more ideas and is more fun.

Here is an overview of the three approaches:

1. Creation with creativity techniques. Here we try to catapult your thoughts out of their usual trajectories to come up with completely new ideas. Often ideas sound crazy at first sight. That’s okay because the ideas are refined bit by bit. The important thing with these techniques is that the participants remain open, positive and constructive, otherwise the head will immediately “close”. Sentences like “But that’s not possible…” or “You’re crazy!” are the absolute creativity killer.
2. Do what already works. According to the motto “Better well copied than badly home-made” – A very good way to a working business idea is to take a role model and implement it in another place or in another form. You have seen a brilliant concept for a soup kitchen in another city? Maybe people at home will love it too! You ask yourself why there is no yoga studio in your town yet? Then you just open it up.
3. Get inspired. Very few people know what great ideas are already out there and just need to be pushed around. In a later post I will share a whole range of business ideas for a wide variety of needs (time commitment, flexibility, income needs, etc.). Browse through the ideas and see what you like. You can then easily build on them and develop your own personal business idea.

What other approaches have you used or come accross?