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DEVELOPING NEW BUSINESS IDEAS66

However uncomfortable it may feel in an action-oriented management
culture, you should have the confidence to decide when to decide, not
in order to avoid committing to action but rather for the purpose of
creating alternatives and increasing your understanding of the market. It
is no different to being on top of a mountain – only from that vantage
point can you see all possible approaches by foot to the top. If you
don’t look at all the possible approaches, how can you be sure that you
have seen the best possible route to the top?

if you don’t look at all the possible
approaches, how can you be sure that
you have seen the best possible route
to the top?

treat your first business idea as purely
tentative Even if you think that you may already have an apparent

solution to an apparent market opportunity, you must not allow the
investigative stage to be constrained by focusing merely on aspects of
the market which your current solution seeks to address.

gather the clues Rather like a detective coming fresh to a crime

scene, your task is to gather as many clues as possible before forming a
view as to who the main suspect might be. This is not the same as
arriving at the scene with a preconceived idea as to the suspect and
then collecting only the clues which confirm your preconception, or
jumping to the very first conclusion suggested by a cursory examination
of the evidence.

As we will see later with Iridium, this open-mindedness is often
difficult to achieve and has led authorities such as Bettina von Stamm,
Head of the Innovation Exchange at London Business School, to
comment that: ‘Another issue with market research is that it is often
undertaken to confirm results or beliefs rather than to gain new
insights.’50

blinkered by convention If you work in a particular business or

industry, you might consider that you know from first-hand experience