I2V: Does My Idea Have Business Legs?

Idea Validation and Opportunity Assessment
Lee Fenicle, Director, and Mary Ann Wendland, Associate Director
Office of Technology Transfer at Creighton University, Omaha, NE

Lots of start-ups fail for the same reasons. Fenicle and Wendland want to help us avoid making the same mistakes.

Great ideas come from technical discoveries, market insights on potential technical solutions, and good old-fashioned problem-solving. A real entrepreneur, says Fenicle, is always trying to solve problems.

Questions to ask in incubation, validation, and evaluation:

1. Will it work?
2. Does it provide significant benefit and value to lots of customers?
3. Is it financially feasible/sensible?
4. Do we have the skills and people to make it work?

Patent applications are published by the patent office 18 months after filing. Read 'em, see if your idea is already out there, but recognize that there's an 18-month dead zone. Plus, that interface is hard to use. Better: try Google Patent and Google Scholar! These searches can help you make sure you're not sinking money into an idea that someone else has already brought to market.

To put a new idea to work, you need to know your technology, your market, and your business. The tech is the easiest part: you're building it, getting your hands dirty with it. You know which wire goes where and does what. Know your tech inside and out. But don't just look at that box on your desk today. Think about where that box will go and how it will evolve at least ten years from now.

Market is harder to predict. It's not a nice neat box on your workbench; it's people, shoppers, trends, forces beyond your control and ken. Understanding markets calls for understanding more than wiring: you have to grok economics, psychology, sociology, politics... you name it! Remember what Kurtenbach said an hour ago: entrepreneurship isn't for specialists!

Business: that means knowing how to sell and turn a profit, keeping a competitive advantage, defining the scope of production (one product? product family? multiple products?), and getting the money to start your engines.

Confidentiality agreements are essential during development. You don't have all the answers. Even the most self-made woman builds her success on the contributions of others. You need to talk to lots of people -- tech people, potential customers, bankers, business experts, your smart brother-in-law -- to get a good picture of whether your idea has business legs. The more people you talk to, the more chance there is of a leak that hurts your chance to bring that idea to market. The Madville Times is all about the free flow of useful, intelligent information. And we definitely don't like contracts that make it hard for movers and shakers to capitalize on their own knowledge and talents. But in a world of people looking out for themselves, well, you've got to cover your bases and protect your competitive advantage. Of course, in return for the confidentiality you demand of your associates, you need to compensate them richly for the sacrifice they are making to help you get rich.