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introduction

At some time in their life, almost everybody has had an idea for
starting their own business or for launching an innovative project.

You are probably no different.

The idea might have been sparked by something you saw on a foreign
holiday or in a different market sector. You might have been dissatisfied
with a product or service which did not work properly. It might have
been an article which you read in the paper. Your own experience
might have highlighted a particular gap in the market. You might think
that your current organisation lets customers down and that you could
do better on your own. You might have been made redundant. You
might just be fed up with working for others. You might even be one of
the favoured few who has had a ‘Eureka’ moment.

But did you actually do something with your initial idea?

Perhaps you told yourself that your idea was not creative enough.

Perhaps some experts told you why your idea would never work.

Perhaps it was pointed out to you that if your idea was really that good,
surely somebody else would already be doing it.

Perhaps you recognised that your idea needed some further refinement,
but the business start-up books to which you turned for help rushed
straight into the details of implementation without answering your
nagging doubts about the strength of your underlying idea.

And if all these issues were not enough, perhaps you read the
government statistics which demonstrated that over 30 per cent of new
businesses do not survive beyond three years.

And so perhaps you put your idea to one side, remaining within the
organisational comfort zone and keeping the security of a monthly pay
cheque. Whatever its intrinsic worth, your idea remains useless,