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DEVELOPING NEW BUSINESS IDEAS22

customer benefit was speed. Operations such as Coffee Republic and
Starbucks redefined the market by presenting a chic environment
together with a more sophisticated range of drinks, thereby creating a
quite different customer proposition.

By the same token, bookseller Tim Waterstone redefined book retailing
by moving the focus away from the depth of the range carried towards
the quality of the book-buying experience itself. He promoted the
expertise of the booksellers themselves and with huge counter-intuitive
conviction introduced non-book-selling space in the form of seating
areas and coffee shops to encourage book browsing and to enhance the
overall experience.

getting stakeholders onside Following a systematic process

for developing new business ideas will also help you more clearly and
accurately to meet the needs of the many different constituencies whose
backing and support you will need to operationalise your business idea,
whether financiers, customers, suppliers or prospective team members.

Every business proposal will be considered by many different people,
each one of whom will be influenced by different backgrounds,
experiences and expectations. This means that what may seem a good
idea to you may be perceived quite differently by them from their
particular perspective. As Clive Sinclair succinctly put it: ‘What
inventors need to recognise is that what is great to them is not
necessarily great to other people.’18

what inventors need to recognise is that
what is great to them is not necessarily
great to other people

The various reactions of these expert audiences usually represent major
stumbling blocks along the way. The predictability of this behaviour is
neatly summed up by Clark’s Law of Revolutionary Ideas: ‘Every new
idea, be it in science, politics, art or any other field, evokes three stages
of reaction: “It’s impossible. Don’t waste my time”; “It’s possible, but
it’s not worth doing”; and “I said it was a good idea all along.”’19