After reading the article "Knowing a Winning Idea When You See One," I was struck by the gap between most people's concept of how to be innovative and how (I would imagine) it usually happens. The type of structure outlined in the article is an excellent way to evaluate how an idea can be translated into a practical business idea. We usually think of innovation as a Eureka moments, but this article highlights how a structured approach to evaluating ideas can lead to success.

I'll take a moment to touch on this Eureka idea theme. I still think that will be the way many ideas come to fruition, especially when an innovator sees the need to improve upon an aspect of the lives of others. However, I believe we all have ideas, but don't know how to judge if they are good or not. I think using this frame work would help us evaluate whether we should further invest in such ideas. I would go even further and say that even in Eureka moments, innovators are unconsciously using such metrics to evaluate their ideas. Since we are in a start up mentality, I will use an example of the people we all love and hate at the same time: Venture Capitalists. I have learned in some of the business courses that I have taken that VCs use an unconscious method to determine what stake to take in a firm. However, when broken down, this formula is very standardized and follows very sensible valuation concepts. But when asked, the VCs claim it is just an estimate from the gut. Over much experience they have internalized these concepts so that they are now intuitive. I would posit that serial entrepreneurs follow the same phenomenon. This begs the question: how do we newbies get this ability? I would say, barring unlimited capital from which we could build experience through experimentation, that we should try to apply such concepts to ideas we see everyday. I would think that after extend use of such a framework, we would be able to build mental schema allowing us to evaluate these ideas quickly and efficiently. Subsequently, we should be able to innovate and pursue our ideas with great efficacy.

In the end, we still need creativity, but by developing such methods we can harness our creativity much more effectively. We need to be inquisitive about how we can improve lives, but I think we all have at least some degree of this in our nature. The key is to be able to capture this desire effectively. Really thinking about this framework and practicing it... then practicing it some more is the way to really make the leap from creating ideas to creating businesses. Just a thought...