| Thoughts on how to push through 1. Pick an industry that you are either interested in and/or you believe is going to be more profitable - i.e. financial services pay more than retail therefore more potential. 2. Take a friend from University who works in that industry and not in technology to dinner, beer, coffee and find out what aspects of their job they find are the biggest PITA. 3. Read up what the management consultants are talking about. Not they should be considered gospel on problem or solution but if they are trying to sell something they believe there is a) problem that exists in that industry, b) there is a market for a solution and c) the industry is buying that solution. 4. Read up what your potential competitors are doing about the problem 5. Go to your thinking space (mines the movies) and noodle. 6. Compare your idea to the knowledge you've acquired in 2,3 and 4. You can bail out at any point, you can do 1 through 4 in any order but do them before 5 and 6. You can be running multiple problems in parallel and you'll probably end up with ideas that coalesce. Then when you've got to step 6 make a decision about whether you're still interested in the problem, because now comes the hard work. |