Expert Financial & Business Insights for South Africa
Strategic analysis from Idea Accelerator and ready-to-publish content from Financial News Daily.
A copycat strategy for developing products and services can be more lucrative than the original invention which sucks huge to amounts of time, energy and money.
But what exactly is an imitation or copycat strategy?
Business owners copy or imitate other companies’ products and services all the time. Some duplicate others’ products without protest from their competitors.
I recently went through some notes I had clipped together in an A4 folder, looking back at the origins of Idea Accelerator. These notes went back many years. They were filled with plans, goals and new business ideas.
You’re not supposed to have regrets but I couldn’t help noticing the things I didn’t action soon enough. The ideas that took sometimes years to get off the ground.
What had gone wrong? Why couldn’t I see my own shortcomings and have done something about them? What was the one single obstacle that had held me back?
I had good business ideas but in some cases it took me years to implement them. If only I could have brought them to life sooner… Continue reading “The biggest mistake I made with my early ideas (what’s yours?)”
Simon Berry came up with an idea to save millions of lives in rural areas in developing countries.
He found that the space between the bottles in the crates used to distribute Coca-Cola can be used to transport oral rehydration salts.
His invention is the ColaLife Aid Pod anti-diarrhoea kit.
It is a waterproof plastic wedge-shaped package for an anti-diarrhoea kit that rests on top and between bottles in Coca-Cola shipping crates.
The AidPod also helps protect people from reinfection. People fill the AidPod with water, add anti-bacteria powder and let the sun’s UV rays kill waterborne bacteria.
New ideas turn into products and services can help to save millions of lives. Continue reading “How do you come up with that winning idea in your business?”
Governments struggling to encourage jobs look to small- and medium-size businesses to be job creators in their countries. But little or absolutely nothing is done. Some may have small business agencies run by – yes, you guessed it – government officials who have never started a business in their lives. Sharp operators sell governments business incubator snake oil and fill their bank accounts with millions for “training” entrepreneurs.
None of this sham boosts small business numbers to a level where sizeable job creation takes place. What really is needed is an understanding of who is motivated enough to take their own business ideas and transform them into products and services. Continue reading “No short cuts to commercialising a new idea – but this tool shows you the way”
Innovation isn’t something that can be reduced to a formula, turned into a formal structured process or be simplified into fixed rules. Nor can you just copy or imitate the methods of another business and expect fixed results.
Ideas can turn up in the shower, while walking or driving your car. You can also come up with ideas by listening to customer complaints, observing product users and spotting problems with existing products and even identifying the gaps between products already on the market.
Some people have found new business ideas in the work they do, their professional experience and working methods and systems of customers, suppliers and other business people. Continue reading “Use this must-have tool to put your new business idea to a 12-step test”
It pays to look for ideas outside your usual routine. Perhaps you are tired of sitting at home, in your study using idea-generation techniques. Then get out and take a look around. Perhaps you’ll find new ideas or ideas to make money with the ideas you already have.
Observation is one of the best tools or methods for finding ideas. Go for a walk. Visit a shopping mall. Trawl through a mall you usually don’t shop at – go to a mall in a low income area or go to an expensive maul out of the range of your customers. Continue reading “How do you scout for ideas?”
What distinguishes entrepreneurs from mere dreamers who don’t have the ability to actualise their new business idea? Continue reading “How do you deal with big customers who use dirty tricks to not pay your small business?”
If you had to flee your country in the dead of the night to make a new life elsewhere, what idea generation techniques would you want to have with you?
I suppose I’ve been thinking about that question not because I feel under threat in the country am living in but because the question sharply focuses on which idea generation tools haved worked so effectively for me and others.
What idea generation techniques have worked best for you? Continue reading “What tools do you have in your ideas toolbox?”
Introduction to my book, “Secrets of Generating Ideas For Profit: how to quickly and easily get viable business ideas”, by Chesney Bradshaw, published by Bell & Cray Business Books:
All it takes to make a million is to come up with a new idea for a product or service and you’ve got it made. A fantasy? Dream? A reality?
Small businesses, start-ups and solo entrepreneurs are coming up with new products and services all the time – just open up your business weekly or business section of your newspaper and you’ll see it. Or, go look around at shopping malls and see the number of new products that have been launched by small companies. Continue reading “Do you experience these struggles when trying to come up with profitable ideas?”
It happened so long ago that I almost forgot about it: how I bought a surfboard from a shop in Muizenberg when I first started surfing and the board was so brittle that it cracked even with the slightest pressure or bump.
In those days, not unlike what still happens in all sorts of products and services, the owner of the surf shop didn’t say a word about the poor quality of manufacture of his product. I can remember how many times I’d have to buy resin, catalyst and fibreglass strips to fix the many “dings” in my surfboard. Continue reading “Keeping tight-lipped about product flaws is fatal for trust”
