[nate]

My favorite method for generating ideas is this:

1) Find a task I have. If I want to make money later from this idea, this task should probably be something I already pay money for, but if I just want to make my life easier, than forget the money part. My credit card statement is a great place to look for the money making ones. Once I have the task...

2) List out all the steps this task has. Be as detailed as you can.

3) Figure out how to remove as many steps as possible.

Seems simple, but I don't see people doing this very much. Instead they focus on making something because it sounds cool or is going to be the next Facebook for people who use Groupon.

OXO is one of my favorite examples of doing this. They make household goods.

1) Task: they studied the tasks people have in the kitchen. They watched how people cooked and baked using measuring cups.

2) Steps: one of the weird steps people have in cooking with measuring cups is when they lift the cup to see the water level against the cups ruler. They would do this 4 or 5 times trying to get an accurate amount of water in their cup.

3) Remove: they figured out they could add the measuring cups ruler to the top of the measuring cup so that people could see the measurement while they used the kitchen faucet to add water. They no longer needed to lift the cup up to read the level.

So simple, but they shaved off those 4-5 extra steps, and they sold millions of their new measuring cups in 18 months.

They innovated on a measuring cup. Pretty inspiring when you think of how long measuring cups have been around and how simple they are. There are so many newer more complicated things around us today that could use the simplification above.

[mixmax]

The Oxo measuring cup is indeed very clever and solves a real problem.

Here's a picture for those (like me) that couldn't quite picture it from nate's description: http://www.amazon.com/OXO-Grips-2-Cup-Angled-Measuring/dp/B0...

[byoung2]

I saw a good example of this at the LA Car Show yesterday. The new Honda Odyssey minivan has a vacuum cleaner built in to the cargo area, with an extendable hose that can reach all the way to the driver seat. Such a simple idea, I can't imagine how no other manufacturer ever thought of it before.

[jliptzin]

What about that great feature where accidentally leaving a cabin light on completely drains the battery so that you can't start the car? Why do so many cars still allow this to happen? I'm no electrical engineer, but it can't be so hard to measure battery life and automatically cut power to the cabin when it gets below a certain threshold.

[andycav]

My BMW did just that: if the battery voltage decreasde under a specific threshold (when the engine was off), any light was switched off. A good idea, anyway.

AC

[jliptzin]

Glad to see some manufacturers finally using common sense.

[bp999]

My Subaru has it to, I'm so surprised it hasn't caught on for how useful it is.

[sirsar]

Or, why don't the headlights automatically turn on with the wipers? It's illegal to drive with wipers on and headlights off.

[awshepard]

Or, why don't they automatically roll up windows when it starts raining? They already have automatic wipers that use a sensor in the windshield, and they have hands-free automatic windows with a safety cutoff in case anything gets in the way. Rain starts? Windows roll up. Never worry about a summer drizzle again.

[gesman]

Second that.

I implemented a task I need and sold it for about $100,000 total to other people.

That's a rule - if you have a problem - chances are - lots of other people have the same problem for solving which they'd be more than happy to pay.

[placementloop]

Services related:

1) Find repeatable operations that distributed users can perform.

2) Achieve scale by helping the users become more efficient (technology) and effective (empathetic).

E.G. Uber, Airbnb