Let’s face it. Everyone is looking for a million-dollar idea that they can launch and ‘make a dent in the universe.’ But unlike a blood pressure (BP) machine that can tell you how high your BP is, and a weighing machine that tells you your weight, there is no machine that tells you how powerful your idea is (or maybe there is but we’ll come to that later).
And therein lies the challenge. For every idea that has succeeded and made someone a million dollars (let’s avoid euros for now) — there are 99 ideas that have failed to take off or catch on. So how do you know or go about validating your idea? Here are five questions to always ask yourself:
Is It As Exciting Next Morning? I don’t intend to be sexist — so feel free to change the gender of this point. An idea is like a hot woman/man — he or she explodes in your mind when you meet and you feel this is it. However, is the feeling as strong the next morning? Remember an idea is not a one-night stand — you have to ‘marry’ it and work on the relationship for a good many years.
Does Only My Mommy Like It? This, of course, is an exaggeration — but have you tested your idea out with only friends and family and people who like you. That doesn’t make any sense; firstly, they are predisposed positively to like it, and secondly, you are there to argue for it.
Is It Goo Or Good? Often you have a goo idea! Yup — I’ve deliberately left out the ‘d’ — because you haven’t made it into a good idea yet. Facebook didn’t have the ‘Like’ button when it launched. It emerged out of a long thinkathon. And now it’s the most used button worldwide. So think, then think more, and get others to think with you.
Who’s Gonna Buy It? All too often I meet people who think they have an idea that will appeal to everyone. Unfortunately, that rarely happens. You have to know exactly who your idea is for and what it will do for them. If you try and be everything to everybody — you will be nothing to nobody.
Does It Exist Or Just Exis? Sometimes it’s a clear cut thing. An idea is totally original and inviolate or an idea exactly like it exists. But often there is a grey area. When someone though of Instagram a novice may have argued that Facebook can do the same thing. This is also the case with WhatsApp and Snapchat. So while sometimes there is a similarity a crucial difference is worth a 100 million dollars!!
Can You Explain It In 11 Words? Eleven, of course, is an arbitrary number, but the less words it takes to sum up an idea the more powerful it is likely to be. If you need to make a long explanation there is a possibility that it isn’t a big idea!
At Adytude we are ‘testing’ ideas all the time for others. Sometimes it’s an existing website looking to improve itself but often it’s a quick ‘confidential test for someone who thinks they have the next million-dollar idea. The results of these tests are quite fascinating because when a sample of say 200 ‘strangers’ of different age groups across India react to an idea very interesting results come up.
The whole point is that it is actually a quick affordable ‘idea’ testing machine.
And that’s what made it an original idea.
Hopefully, it will help a hundred other ideas to be born!
Columnist
The author is a legendary ad man who has won over a 100 awards in his career. He is also an author, a novelist a playwright and song writer. Now he has founded the unusual and powerful website adytude.com which helps power other websites, brands and businesses ahead
