Ideation: How to think of ideas for a startup

On May 2, Acelera was honored to have the founder of Koder.com, Elmer Morales, present on Ideation for the #Latinx community at Indie Desk, the first co-working space in downtown Los Angeles.

As Mr. Morales stated during the presentation, ideation is the creative process of generating, developing, and communicating new ideas. The ideas can be about a new business, a new product or service, or event simply about innovative ways to market an existing product or service. The idea is the first of five key elements that lead to a successful startup; the other four are: team & execution, business model, funding, and timing.

So what makes a particular idea succeed? Well according to a study conducted by IdeaLab, of the five elements above, almost half of the respondents identified timing as the crucial element in what makes an idea succeed. About a third agreed that team & execution are important, and about a quarter mentioned the idea itself.

Generating and developing ideas for a startup requires effort. You are more likely to develop a solid idea if you implement a specific strategy or framework. For example, the business model canvas is a popular framework to help think through and flesh out an idea. In general, an ideation strategy for developing a scalable product or service should seek to answer some key questions, including:

- Who is the product or service for? (Define your persona)

- What are the most important components?

- What are some relevant use cases for your product or service?

- Where would users get the most value from your product or service?

These types of questions help to formulate your idea and to subsequently test the idea with real users.

Always remember - an idea is worthless unless you execute!!