A good entrepreneurial idea isn’t just about creating a big brand, making profits and launching an IPO. There are many more layers to what constitutes a strong business idea and, consequently, a well-rounded product. Let us delve more into how entrepreneurial ideas work.
To begin with, what is entrepreneurship? It is defined as the process of creating and managing a business venture to solve problems and generate profit or impact. It involves a certain degree of innovation and risk-taking. A crucial skill required for an entrepreneur is problem-solving, which unfortunately happens to be a deal breaker in many cases. Most startups fail because the problem was interpreted incorrectly or didn’t exist in the first place. Let us look at how entrepreneurs solve problems and what happens in the process.
Solving before understanding
The biggest mistake many entrepreneurs commit is romanticising the solution instead of grasping the problem clearly. You need to step away from the mindset that your solution will magically solve half of the world’s problems. Understand that no matter how wonderful your product is, unless you identify who it is useful for, it is practically useless.
For instance, if you develop a food delivery service that promises fresh and hot food for users but you command a premium price, people may not adopt it. The reason is that they may prefer lower prices and not mind if the food isn’t healthy enough. In some cases, the opposite may apply. The only way for you to confirm it is by conducting market and customer research. Nothing speaks the truth better than real-time data - analyse the collected data and make sense of your targeted customers’ preferences. This will help you evaluate whether to proceed or not. It also saves your efforts and monetary investment.
Concentrate on the problem, not the solution
The best solutions emerge from identifying current drawbacks, rather than from sudden “Eureka!” moments. The characteristics of a good entrepreneurial problem are:
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Having the current solution causes increasing customer frustration
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Glaring levels of inefficiency
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High cost or inconvenience
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Involving tasks people don’t like but can’t avoid
These points are a clear indication that there is potential for a better solution to be launched in the market.
Problem-solution fit is critical
A proper problem-solution fit is vital for the success of the product or service. Hence, devote more time towards finding out whether there is a legitimate need or market for your product, if customers will be willing to adopt it and understand their present grievances and issues with the existing solution comprehensively.
This will help you find the right market space for your solution, which will be a tailor-made one solving the grievances of the customer - this becomes a genuine case of problem-solving and will make an impact in the lives of your customers, which in turn will help your business grow.
Common questions to assess the problem-solution fit are:
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Is this problem strong enough to pay for?
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Who feels it most strongly?
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How frequently does it occur?
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What happens if the problem is not solved?
If the problem is a mild, moderate or occasional one, even a groundbreaking solution will not succeed, simply because the problem isn’t deep enough.
Confusing symptoms with root causes
Another common area that is an issue in problem-solving is mistaking symptoms for root causes. For instance, if the problem is that customers are not using an app, it is only a symptom. The root cause could be a bad UI/UX design, a poor onboarding experience or even unclear value communication.
A good entrepreneur digs deeper to identify the issues that need to be addressed. This will help them get to the bottom of the issue and come up with a detailed solution that solves the exact requirement. This is done by repeatedly probing “why” and analysing further at each step, not restricting knowledge to only assumptions, but actually conducting customer research and confirming their preferences. While it may sound straightforward, several ideas fail due to the lack of proper research.
Assuming, not ascertaining
Early-stage problem-solving has a very important element, and that is testing assumptions. Strong entrepreneurs split assumptions into blocks, such as:
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Customers care about this issue
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They are willing to change their present behaviour
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They are willing to pay for a solution (sometimes, even a premium)
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The proposed solution fits how they currently work
These assumptions must be exhaustively tested with customer interviews and market research and validated based on the results. If your solution solves a real problem in the market, go ahead and create the MVP or Minimum Viable Product. This is the most basic, simplest version of the product, which helps in idea validation, assumption testing and feedback collection.
Good ideas fail
Remember that the quality of your idea does not guarantee customer adoption. There are many startups that failed despite having solid products, since there was no established product need, the problem wasn’t urgent, wrong user targeting, willingness to pay was misjudged, and intuition was given greater emphasis over on-ground feedback. Problem-solving in entrepreneurship prioritises learning speed over perfection.
Validating the assumptions and pivoting aren’t easy for entrepreneurs, but the sooner they are done, the sooner you are on track. This is where the Lean Startup model is of great use. It is a scientific approach which focuses on the build-measure-learn cycle, wherein you build the MVP, measuring required metrics and investigate until clarity is gained. This helps avoid waste of time and makes pivots faster.
To sum it up, problem-solving is a critical skill for entrepreneurs and determines success in the venture more than creativity or intelligence. Things that matter more are how quickly they are willing to learn from real-life customer/market feedback, the speed at which they are ready to move on from wrong assumptions, their appetite for risk-taking and how early they are ready to make the pivot. An entrepreneur needs to be extremely passionate and obsessed with finding a solution that satisfies a real problem instead of being married to the solution.
