A lot of people will be starting the year with fresh ideas. If you have one, you need to make sure that it is going to be a success before you invest a lot of time and money. 

Your idea

It goes without saying that you need to make sure that your idea is a good one before the development stage begins. However, figuring this out before you have spent a lot of money on designing a product and bringing it to the market is difficult. How can you be sure that your idea is as good as you think it is? Is it worth your time and energy? Is it something that you should move forward with?

To determine this, there are a number of different elements that you can look at. The first thing you need to do is to make sure that the product offers a benefit. How are your customers going to benefit from your product? What problems does it solve? These benefits can be minor tweaks are slight improvements, but they must be legitimate. Not all winning ideas solve inconveniences and problems, but the vast majority do.

You then need to consider the market for your product before you start a business. What sort of market will you be operating in? Of course, you do not need to operate in a large market in order to have a successful product. There are lots of great niche products that are available today. However, you need to do thorough research and you need to understand your market before you start investing in your idea.

Can you succinctly describe your product? This is another factor that you must consider when determining whether or not your idea is a good one. If someone asks you to describe your idea, what will you say? If you find yourself rambling on for 15 minutes, this is not a good sign. You should be able to summarise your product idea in just one sentence. The best example that we can give regarding this was when Steve Jobs first revealed the iPod. Describing it, he said the product was “one thousand songs in your pocket.” Who wouldn’t have wanted that at the time?

Timing

Timing is even more important than your idea. Understanding where your product is in terms of timing is critical. Are you early to the table? If so, then there needs to be a great emphasis on educating people. If the world is not ready for your product yet, then you cannot simply bring it to the market and expect people to jump on board. Of course, if you are too late to the party, you can have an even bigger issue on your hands. This means that competition is fierce and there are already a large number of businesses doing what you are planning to do. What is going to make your business different? How are you going to get customers to come to you?