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How to Get an Idea for a New Business

You can use the same method that generated the idea for Twitter to create a new idea for your business. It just takes a little brainstorming and a few important ground rules. 
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What’s the Latest Development?

When entrepreneur Jason Nazar wanted a new idea for his business, he turned to the method which produced the idea for Twitter, a website you may have heard of. But before there was Twitter, there was Odeo. And when its founder, Evan Williams, decided the company needed a fresh start, he broke his employees into small groups and gave them a week to generate a fresh idea. Jack Dorsey came back with Twitter and the rest, as they say, is history. When Nazar implemented the same strategy, his employees returned with a similarly unique idea which is now under development. 

What’s the Big Idea?

Nazar had an idea of what ground rules would produce the freshest and most effective ideas. First, he thought there needed to be some parameters. ‘They had to be able to make $1 million in the first year and we had to be able to build a minimum viable product in three months,’ he says. Then he paired engineers with business people precisely because they have little experience working together. When the teams return with their ideas, Nazar recommends paying attention to the people’s choice even if a judging panel selects another project as the winner. 

Photo credit: shutterstock.com


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Happy New Year
It’s plain to see that I’m an optimist, sometimes more than is socially comfortable. The ease with which I dismiss the disastrous economic decline above serves as one example of that. I wrote that the recession will benefit our political system, and, before I cut this line, as having “rewarded our company for methodical execution and ruthless efficiency by removing competitors from the landscape.” I make no mention of the disastrous effects on millions of people, and the great uncertainty that grips any well-briefed mind, because it truly doesn’t stand in the foreground of my mind (despite suffering personal loss of wealth). Our species is running towards a precipice with looming dangers like economic decline, political unrest, climate crisis, and more threatening to grip us as we jump off the edge, but my optimism is stronger now than ever before. On the other side of that looming gap are extraordinary breakthroughs in healthcare, communications technology, access to space, human productivity, artistic creation and literally hundreds of fields. With the right execution and a little bit of luck we’ll all live to see these breakthroughs — and members of my generation will live to see dramatically lengthened life-spans, exploration and colonization of space, and more opportunity than ever to work for passion instead of simply working for pay. Instead of taking this space to regale you with the many personal and focused changes I intend to make in 2009, let me rather encourage you to spend time this year thinking, as I’m going to, more about what we can do in 2009 to positively affect the future our culture will face in 2020, 2050, 3000 and beyond.
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