How to Generate Business Ideas

Business starts around ideas. Either the idea is good or bad, its contains something that attracts entrepreneurs. That is why some silly ideas become great business ventures. Africa entrepreneurs should know that when there is a shortage of goods and services or crisis in a community, then there is an opportunity to generate business ideas. EnterpriseAfrik has compiled a cocktail of simple and wild ideas that could be transformed into serious profitable business ventures.


Suggestions for business opportunities:


• Start a shop to buy or rent warm clothes, heaters or blankets (cold communities); or fans or air conditioners (warm communities).


• Start a small campus-based shop, organise transport to the town, or offer a shopping service, for a small commission to be added to the cost of what is bought.


• Organise some evening entertainment, rent a video and show some films, organise a trip to the nearest cinema.


• Start a money-lending business or campus bank; borrow money from those who have some to spare, and lend it, at a higher rate of interest, to those who have not got enough for their business.


• Start a courier service, take letters to the post for a fee, organise a trip to the nearest Public Call Office.


Businesses have sprung up everywhere in very large numbers in recent years; what businesses have grown out of the following problems?


• Educated young people cannot find employment (computer training schools)

• It takes a long time and is very expensive to get your own telephone line (private call offices)


• The post office is slow and unreliable (private fax services and inter-city couriers)


• Entrance to good schools is very difficult (private tutors)


Other ways of generating business ideas. Elicit possibilities such as:


• Applying existing skills to new products or services.


• Using available materials for different products.


• Finding new uses for existing products.


The search for business ideas requires self-confidence and optimism. We are all inclined to look for negative reasons why something cannot be done, rather than to be positive and optimistic.


African entrepreneurs must come up with positive suggestions as to how problems might be exploited in order to improve businesses. They should put forward ideas, no matter how wild or apparently ridiculous


Wild' ideas


Problem: There is a shortage of cooking oil.


Solution: Start growing oil seeds and pressing oil yourself.


Problem: I cannot identify a suitably skilled worker.


Solution: Start a skills training school.

Problem: I have no capital, and my workers will steal all my money.


Solution: Get the workers to be shareholders in the business.


Problem: The government controls the raw material supplies.


Solution: Hire unemployed youths to collect scrap material.


Problem: My potential customers all need credit.


Solution: Start a bank and lend them money.


All these solutions have actually been implemented by entrepreneurs who faced these problems.


Many if not most of the ideas generated by this 'brain-storming' approach may seem unrealistic or even stupid, African entrepreneurs should know how their own grandparents or great grandparents might have reacted sixty years ago to suggestions such as:


• A machine to carry 500 people to halfway around the world in twelve hours.


• A small box in your pocket which enables you to communicate with the whole world wherever you are.


• A small typewriter without paper which could store hundreds of pages of writing or other information and allow it to be printed or changed at any time.

• A little piece of plastic which could be used instead of money, all over the world.


• A small box with a glass screen on the front which could show people things that were happening anywhere in the world, as they were happening.


The people who invented and then built businesses on these apparently mad ideas were not fools. They were optimists who realised that they could satisfy people's needs for more rapid travel, for easier communication, for easier typing and access to data, for making payments without cash and for home-based information and entertainment, by matching them to new technology.


What motivated the people, who built businesses on these needs and ideas, and who continue to do the same all over the world; were they motivated by a desire to serve their fellow human beings, by technical curiosity, or what?


Like all people who start businesses, they wanted to make a profit, to compensate them for the risks they took and for their hard work; many famous business pioneers, like so many of the thousands of more modest innovators who start businesses every day, failed and lost all their money. Others succeeded and became millionaires, but the needs which they identified would never have been satisfied if these people had not been willing to take the optimistic view and risk their money and their labour.


Business involves more than optimism; it also requires some simple planning. If the person starting the business wants to borrow money from other people to add to her own money, she will also have to persuade the other people that the business is a good possibility; this requires a business plan, which is the subject of the next session.


African entrepreneurs should now think about their business ideas.



Source: The group enterprise resource book (FAO) Part 1: Step 2: Choosing a business idea

(See Resources / Client advice / Enterprise development in the Learning Centre)