如何构思一条绝好的创业点子

所有的创业历程都是个人生活与职业生活错综复杂的纠缠过程。要想树立一个有价值的创业理念，你首先必须清楚，哪些机会能让以下三个因素实现最大化：一、你的技能和价值；二、你有热情去解决的问题；三、盈利潜力。

你可能已经看出来了，这种分析本质上也是一种产品与市场的匹配研究。该理念通常用在企业里，但对个人创业来说，效果也是很显著的。

深入研究

在这个过程中，首先要深入分析你自己。你要列出自己的五大价值、五大优势、五大技能和五大生活目标。像迈尔－布里格斯性格分类法测试、盖洛普的优势识别测试等（包括最新的企业家优势测试），都有助于你从细节入手，找到自己的优势。

你可能还需要从你的个人和职业关系网中收集一些反馈。然后对这些数据进行汇总，在每张列表中，合并类似的优点，直到每张列表只剩下五个优势，此时结论就很明显了。

如果你的结论是你最重视家庭，你最具优势的技能是为人提供咨询，而且你的首要生活目标是达到工作与私人生活的平衡，那么，你可以下决心建立一家能够让你拥有较多闲暇时间的公司，比如，一家专业服务公司。如果你最重视地位，你又有高超的计算机工程方面的技能，而且你想过富足的生活，那么，你就可以下结论了：当一家科技创业公司的CTO可能非常适合你。

兴趣领域

下一步是评估你对哪些领域有热情。在这一步中，你可以结合自己曾学习过的学科，或是在此前工作中熟悉的领域，或是结合你的一项兴趣爱好。所有的主题都可以——只要你对它们有热情，哪怕它们与你的技能完全无关也没关系。比如，我们上文中提到的CTO可能对宠物、咖啡和亚洲文化等多个话题感兴趣。重要的是，你要觉得自己有激情去从事和解决这些领域的问题。

机遇

你可以把以上两个步骤当成维恩图里的两个圈，你下一步要做的，就是看这两个圈的重合部分。换句话说，就是如何用你的优势和才智去做你感兴趣的话题领域。比如，我们上文提到的那位CTO可能会想出一些很多样化的点子，例如构建一个专门面向宠物主人的社交app，或是为咖啡爱好者打造一个在线社区。她还可以制作一个综合了她的各种兴趣的东西，比如一款让能亚洲的宠物主人出来聚会喝咖啡的社交app。你的任务就是开拓你的思维，让尽可能多的有趣、搞笑甚至异想天开的点子进入你的脑子。为了让自己“沉浸”在这种“头脑风暴”里，你有必要暂时不去想你在现实生活中应该做什么，而是要像个孩子一样释放自己的想象力，畅想一下自己能做什么。

了解市场

现在你已经有了几个很酷的商业点子。在这个时候就跑去成立公司，是许多创业人都会犯的一个错误。这个阶段是创业前极为重要的最后一步——评估你的点子是否能够盈利。本阶段分析的关键，是要理解你所要服务的顾客。要主动接触他们，核实他们的痛点，看看他们是不是愿意付钱购买你的产品或服务。另外，尽量与经验丰富的生意人聊聊，以测试你的假设是否可行，请他们找出你的理念中的漏洞。这种批判式的思考，很有可能会在你原先的理念的基础上，催生出更有可能成功的理念。你还可以更加注意你在日常生活中遇到的横向的业务问题，很多杰出的创业点子就是这样诞生的。你越经常将自己的点子与人分享，越经常征求别人的反馈，这些点子就会变得越坚实，你对自己的创业点子也就越自信。（财富中文网）

本文作者艾弗莉•罗斯是一名创业战略家，也是创业咨询集团（Startup Consulting Group）的创始人兼CEO。她主要与创业公司的创始人一道，进行产品－市场匹配分析，帮助创业公司促进规模增长，以及进行融资准备等。

译者：朴成奎

All entrepreneurial journeys are a complex intertwining of personal and professional life. To create a worthwhile business concept, you must figure out which opportunities make the most of three factors: your skills and values, the problems you are passionate about solving, and the profit potential. You may recognize this analysis as a version of product-market fit—a concept usually reserved for companies, but one that also works incredibly well for individuals.

Deep dive

The process begins with a deep dive into oneself. Your aim is to list your top five values, strengths, skills, and lifestyle goals. Personality tests such as Myers-Briggs and Gallup’s StrengthsFinder (including the new entrepreneurial strengths test) can be helpful in fleshing out some of this detail. You may also wish to solicit feedback from your personal and professional network. Aggregate the data, and for each of your lists, consolidate similar attributes into buckets until you have only five traits on each list. The conclusions will be crystal clear.

For example, if you conclude that you value family, that some of your best skills relate to advising other people, and that your primary lifestyle goal is to have work-life balance, you may determine that you want to build a company that will allow you sufficient time off, such as a professional services business. On the other hand, if you value status, you have fantastic computer-engineering skills, and your lifestyle goals include penthouse living, you might conclude that becoming a CTO at a tech startup is a good fit for you.

Passion topics

The next step is to assess the topical areas about which you are passionate. This exercise can incorporate subject matter you’ve studied, a domain you have mastered in previous careers, or a subject that’s been a hobby for you to date. All subjects are fair game—so long as you’re passionate about them—and they can be totally unrelated to your skills. For instance, the CTO in our example might have a passion for topics as diverse as pets, coffee, and Asia. The important thing is that you feel energized to promote and solve problems in these domains.

Opportunities

Think about the previous steps as feeding two circles of a Venn diagram. Your next step is to assess where those circles overlap. In other words, how can you bring your strengths and talents to topics you are passionate about? For example, our CTO might come up with ideas as diverse as building an app where pet owners can meet each other, or a community for coffee lovers. She could also build something that combines her interests, like an app where pet owners in Asia can meet for coffee. Your mission is to open your mind to as many fun, interesting, maybe even wacky ideas that instill you with excitement. In order to immerse yourself substantively in this exercise, it’s necessary to surrender your ideas of what you should do with your life, and instead embrace a childlike wonder for what you could do.

Market overlay

You now have a list of cool business concepts. Jumping into building a business at this point is exactly where many entrepreneurs go wrong. It’s a critical final step to assess whether your ideas are likely to be profitable. The key in this analysis is to understand the customers for whom you are solving a problem. Reach out to them to verify their pain points and their willingness to pay. Speak to experienced business people to test your assumptions and ask them to poke holes in your thesis. This critical thinking will likely generate new derivatives of your original idea that are much more likely to succeed. You may also become more observant of lateral business problems you encounter in your daily life, which is precisely how many brilliant startup ideas are generated. The more often you share your ideas and open them up to feedback, the stronger they will become and the more certain you will feel that you have a business idea worth building.

Avery Roth is a startup strategist and the founder and CEO of The Startup Consulting Group. She works with startup founders to achieve product-market fit, scale, and prepare for fundraising.