Seven ways to generate business ideas

Celebrate your ideas AND the struggle to get them

Think you don’t have an idea?

Welcome to World Creativity and Innovation Week, where we encourage and celebrate everyone’s ability to get new ideas, use their imagination and make new decisions to make the world a better place. It’s what successful entrepreneurs do every day.

But how do they do it? The secret is, there’s no secret! You, too, can do it — and make the world better, just by being aware and open.

In this video on ideation (idea generation) our former CFO, Charles Plant talks about where ideas come from by looking at the examples of entrepreneurs we see here at MaRS. Get inspired by there stories and find out how you can generate an idea for your own business.

Where to look for ideas:

1. Research – Paul Chipperton talks about how his company, Profound Medical, emerged from years of lab research.
2. Eureka moments – Pond Biofuels’ Steve Martin talks about how this idea about algae came about.
3. In-depth knowledge of an industry – PushLife’s Ray Reddy (recently sold to Google) talks about how his experience at RIM identified an opportunity in the mobile space. (forecasting future trends)
4. Listen to customers – Terry Matthews founded Benbria by identifying a particular market’s need for mass notification.
5. Your own problems – Matthew Williams’ iPeak Networks now optimizes IP networks because he encountered this problem in his own professional life.
6. The problems of others – eSight was started to help his sisters with their low-sight issues
7. Personal interests - John Paul Morgan started Morgan Solar on a dare to do the hardest, most worthwhile thing he could think of.

For more inspiration on what you can do this week to celebrate creativity and innovation, read “Welcome to Idea Week!“

Related Blogs

 

Toronto’s largest DIY festival
Have you ever picked a lock? Or opened up your computer to see how it works?  Or made a catapult designed with spare parts from a junkyard?  A festival being held this weekend at the Evergreen Bri

Entrepreneurs in Action: Morgan Solar, NIMTech, Profound Medical, Shape Collage and Verold
At MaRS, we work with hundreds of early-stage companies to help them grow their businesses. Sometimes, some of those companies do great things: they win awards, secure financing, enter into partnersh

Great minds don't think alike
Charles Darwin, despite his momentous effect on the world of biology, was not a trained biologist. His knowledge of geology was what allowed him to think deeply about how things change over time. His

Innovation: Breaking it down
Joelle Abra walks us through the first month of her Biodesign fellowship at Stanford. This month, she gets acquainted with the industry, the process of innovation and team building. Follow along with

Entrepreneurship and the "third eye" of Shiva
Market Intelligence Director, Usha Srinivasan recently attended a TiE event, “Entrepreneur Values in a Globalized Economy” with Dr. Mrityunjay B. Athreya — the Peter Druker of India

Is design thinking the key to successful innovation?
The Beal Institute for Strategic Creativity believes that the key to innovation is design thinking. In this first of a series of guest blogs, Greg Van Alstyne explains the role of design thinking in

Tags: benbria, Creativity, esight, innovation, ipeak, morgansolar, pondbiofuels, profoundmedical, pushlife