Nontrivial techniques for finding business ideas

Treasure hunters in fact and reformers in dreams, businessmen do not like to calculate the "fish places" by analyzing boring statistics. They prefer ready-made recipes and short cuts. But in the days of scientific and technological revolutions, going to fortune-tellers was not fashionable. Therefore, in their place adapted methods of managing creativity.


Designing Ideas as an Innovative Magic Crystal

Known techniques of creative management

Technical progress requires the flow of new solutions. Professional inventors have developed many methods for constructing ideas, and entrepreneurs have adopted them.

Brainstorming (conference of ideas) is based on group infection. Driven by an experienced facilitator, participants fly out of the inertia of thinking. And they begin to drive the snowstorm to generate free associations. Then the skeptics put on headphones, and a couple of three pearls are scooping from the records of the bird market. Or do not rake, as lucky. The method is random.
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Syintestics and the method of focal objects have stricter rules. Synectics instructs the group to use analogies. Straight lines from adjacent areas, empathic according to Stanislavsky (I am the site, brew me). And symbolic (semantic) based on games with language constructs. The method of focal objects crosses the subject of study with anything. As a matrix of ideas studio Lebedev.


Matrix of Lebedev's ideas. 10 years unchanged

Unlike brainstorming and its derivatives, the morphological analysis is individual. It does not need assistants, meeting rooms, voice recorders. Even the computer is not needed. Draw a tablet by hand. In the line, we write the parameter A, in the column the parameter B, the combinations at the intersections of "we will marry". The morphological analysis is so obvious that it was first discovered in the XII century, and since then it has been rediscovered every year. So, in February 2017, the former owner of the Oyster book service, Eric Stromberg, described it on the Medium blog as a method for searching ideas for startups.

Eric Stromberg Matrix

Eric placed in the leftmost column 39 types of activities (they are also types of demand). Shopping, games, fashion, sport, real estate, work and career, transport. And the topmost line filled 30 tools of information technology and marketing. For example, “create a virtual reality application”, “create a widget”, “find the cheapest rental”, “focus on the market segment”.


1170 variants of startups

Most of the cells are empty. It is understood that the novice start-up will dig out his pot of gold in them. And to illustrate the method, Eric filled out some cells with famous examples:

Example 1:

	CREATE A NEW EXPERIENCE BASED ON INDEPENDENT OPENINGS
SHOPPING	Pinterest

Example 2:

	CREATE A WEB 2.0 COMMUNITY.
TRAVELS	Tripadvisor

Example 3:

	APPLY "ECONOMY ON REQUEST"
TRANSPORT	Uber

Matrix Madcats

A young Russian neo-capitalism fears knowledge as a botan infection. That is why morphological analysis is practiced by business consultants ( TRIZ-Chance ), and their smaller copywriter brothers.

Since 2016, the editors of Madcats use morphological analysis to compile content plans, crop matrices, publication schedules. Themes of publications arise at the intersection of the properties and methods of using the product, the stages of the sales funnel, the characteristics of the target segments. “Insane Seals” are not limited to the simple intersection of parameters, they manage creative search with the help of heuristics.


Linguistics, heuristics or just common sense?

And also build N - dimensional matrices for combining a variety of parameters. Against the backdrop of copyright reigning a mess, such a scientific approach looks very cool.

Tips for resolving contradictions

The algorithm for solving the inventive problems of Heinrich Altshuller (ARIZ), safely banned by the world behind the scenes, as far back as 1973, classified the intellectual methods of creating new ideas. Of the 39 described techniques, 29 were purely engineering, suitable only for solving design problems. But the remaining 10 principles of Altshuller are universal and applicable to any field of creativity. Here they are:

1. "Merge";
2. "Increase decrease";
3. "Go to another dimension";
4. "Go to the supersystem or subsystem";
5. "Add periodic action";
6. "Add feedback";
7. "Add self-service";
8. “Do harm in favor”;
9. "To increase the intensity of the processes";
10. "Do the opposite."

ARIZ is not a sect, but a means of disciplining the mind

Obviously, the morphological analysis according to Stromberg is based on the “Unite” technique (along with the principle of universality). And Madcats adds the “Go to Supersystem or Subsystem” method to them. In other words, to rise higher in the system hierarchy: from landscape design to landscape, from landscape to ecosystem and the general development plan. And go down below: from landscape design to its elements: lawns, trees, paths. And from them even lower, to the branches, flowers, tile.

Using the tenth method of Heinrich Altshuller “To do the opposite” (ANTI) to search for business ideas will be discussed in the second part of the article .

Sources:

"A matrix with ideas for startups"
"Typical methods of resolving contradictions"
"Modern methods of creativity / creativity"