Page 175 - DNBI_A01.QXD

DEVELOPING NEW BUSINESS IDEAS152

You must now prioritise the ideas so that it is the most promising ones
which you take forward first to the next step of evaluating and selecting
the business solutions to seize those opportunities. As with the
previous step, this need to prioritise reveals that you are in a Catch-22
position – in order to prioritise rationally the ideas for evaluation and
selection at Step Three of the idea development process, you already
need to have gone through the third step.

The best way for you to break out of the impasse of prioritising from
among multiple ideas is to use a whole-brain approach.

Your assumption reversal may have created perspectives which allow
your left-brain to influence the decision – some ideas may appear
significantly more attractive from a financial perspective than others, for
example. This is well illustrated in the following case study on
archetypal innovator Thomas Edison, whose left-brain business acumen
allowed him to reject the technically superior option for his new light
bulb filament in favour of a commercially less risky alternative.

You may also reflect whether the business idea appears durable, timely
and capable of sustaining a product or service which creates or adds
value for its buyer or end-user.

In large part, however, you will have to rely on your gut-feel and
intuition to make your decision. Having been through the techniques
explored in this chapter, you are probably the person best placed to
make that subjective judgement. After all, Howard Head sensed the
pattern between the ski market and the tennis racket market before he
made himself a ‘left-brain expert’ in every area of conventional tennis
racket manufacture.

Remember that there is nothing to be lost by this method – you are not
screening out ideas, you are merely prioritising them for further work.

Thomas Alva Edison – idea generator par
excellence119

in many ways, Edison is the archetypal successful innovator.

With a record number of 1,093 patents for different inventions to his
name, he combined right-brain imagination with left-brain business
acumen to make things happen in a way that went far beyond the
description of Edison as mere inventor. It is little wonder that British