Start business

You can find ideas for business from a number of sources:

• Environment analysis, problem identification and opportunities. Be open to novelties, observe people and their preferences, choices, global trends. Focus your attention on problems faced by consumers, maybe you could offer a solution to the problem? New products or services frequently gain popularity at the lightning speed – if you find a potential idea, work on it.
• Close environment. Before starting to develop a business idea, it is always advised to start searching for it in your closest environment. Consider what product or service you or your close people usually lack, what would you consider as a useful, effective, needed product/service. Be creative and practical – identification of a lacking product or service can become a niche for your business realisation.
• Available professional abilities. Starting a new business having specific experience or educational background in a certain field is useful and expedient – you will realise your professional capacities, while the buyer will be offered a quality product or service.
• Experience of other countries. Benefit from good practice and examples of other countries – creation and development of products and services recognised in foreign countries can be an excellent idea for a new business in Lithuania.
• Networking. Looking for a successful business idea? Stay closer to business – attend training, networking events, search for opportunities to communicate with entrepreneurs from various fields.

Check your business idea

You have an idea? Then it’s time to check it straight away. Finding an idea is only half the work. Statistically, 7 out of 10 new products do not satisfy consumers’ expectations and needs, therefore businesses creating them fail. It can be avoided by checking your idea at the early stage of its development.

Check of an idea consists of four main stages:

• Market analysis
• Idea testing
• Idea adaptation to market needs

1. Market analysis is intended to collect main information about business environment and generation of answers to the main questions. In this stage, data readily available on Internet can help you: general statistics, statistics of the business sector you are interested in, data and performance results of companies engaged in similar field. Answer the following questions to yourself:

• What is the size of the market you will target? Is the market of your product or service growing or declining?
• Who are your main rivals? How are they doing?
• What competitive advantage you may have?
• Who will be your customers and what are their main needs?
• What price of your offered product or service could be?

2. Idea testing is completely practical stage of idea testing enabling you to look into your target customer’s eyes and get an answer whether the market is ready to pay for you invented service or product. Introduce your service or product as accurately as possible, highlight their main properties and find out if your product or service is relevant for the market and what price could possibly be. Idea testing must be conducted at the lowest costs possible and can be carried out by the following ways:

• Poll. Prepare a poll and find out what target customers think about your invented service or product. You can conduct a poll online (in the groups or forums, where customers likely to be interested in your product or service gather) or simply on the street (provided you can reach interested persons, e.g., having an idea of opening a dessert shop on the appropriate street).
• Pilot website and campaign on social networks. Nowadays, a lot of free tools are available on Internet, with the help of which you can create a pilot informative website about your planned service or product easily and conveniently. Concentrate all main information, photos and share this website on social networks (you can create campaigns for testing different messages about the service or product), other Internet sources chosen by your target audience.
• Focus group. This method gives you an opportunity to introduce your idea in greater detail to the selected group of people who by their characteristics meet your target audience, and to receive highly comprehensive feedback. Constructively organised discussion about an appropriate idea will reveal harder identifiable needs, expectations and even emotions of your group regarding your service or product that are more difficult to identify.
• Prototype. Creating a pilot product at the minimum cost is highly important in order to assess customer’s reaction and demand for a future product. A consumer able to use a prototype will give you the most comprehensive feedback for product improvement.

3. Idea adaptation to market needs – once youu have analysed the competitive environment, checked the value of your idea and customers’ interest, it is time to assess all collected information and rethink the idea once again. What did the future customers say during testing? What price is a consumer ready to pay? What extra features does your service or product need?

Collected feedback is in particular valuable – use it properly. It is the right time to improve your idea or to drop it without incurring a significant loss.

If following the market analysis and idea testing, you found out that customers are ready to pay for your invented service or product and you have proof that your idea is economically feasible – the time for the next stages of business idea realisation has arrived!

We recommend not to miss the strategic part of idea realisation and plan your business.