How can you turn an idea into a viable business?

I’m sure we’ve all had an idea at some point that made us think: “This might be a business!” How can you turn that brilliant idea into a real and viable business? Where do you start? This summer, we ran the Creand Summer Innovation Challenge, a programme in which we teamed up with a group of summer training course participants to help them shape their ideas guided by a structured process which would enable them to turn these ideas into viable projects.

The first step in this process is to carefully pinpoint the problem our idea is designed to solve. Let’s imagine our idea is to craft an app which helps children manage their pocket money. This app might be the solution to a fairly widespread problem: the difficulty lots of children have in learning how to handle their money responsibly. Identifying this problem helps us to set out our value proposition and enables us to better convey our idea’s purpose to future users.

The next step is to find out whether there is sufficient public interest and demand. You can do this by conducting surveys and interviews and analysing data from public reports to confirm interest in your idea.

Once you know there’s a potential market, it’s crucial to pick out your target audience. In the case of our savings app for children, we might primarily target parents looking to teach their kids how to manage their money along with educators interested in children’s financial literacy. Really understanding who your users are means you can tailor your solution to their specific needs, making it more effective and appealing.

Another critical stage is building a multi-talented team. An outstanding team is pivotal to the success of any project. Each team member ought to bring complementary skills and expertise to the table. In our example, we might need an app developer, a user experience design expert, a financial education specialist and someone with marketing savvy to reach our target audience.

With your team in place, you then need to think about how you’re going to generate revenue. Mapping out a well-defined business model is essential to ensure your project is sustainable over the long term. You might look at subscription models, freemium options with in-app purchases or maybe partnerships with financial institutions keen to foster financial literacy. You need to explore a range of business models and pick the one which best suits your proposition.

Before releasing the full product, it’s essential to develop a prototype. This prototype enables you to see what your app will look like and conduct initial trials with a small group of users. You need to test your idea with real users before investing more time and resources in full development.

Once the prototype has been tested and tweaked, it’s time to roll out an MVP (Minimum Viable Product). An MVP is a simplified version of the final product with just its essential features. Its purpose is to bring the product to market quickly to get real feedback from users and validate the business model in a real-world environment. This stage is crucial to learn what works and what needs to be improved before undertaking further investment.

Building a business from an idea is not easy. Even though there’s no way to guarantee success, following these steps will nonetheless enable you to start off on a solid footing. At the Creand Summer Innovation Challenge we’ve gone on this journey with our summer training course participants, furnishing them with the tools and knowhow they need to turn their ideas into real projects. Perseverance, adaptability and proper preparation give an idea a better chance of becoming a viable business.

Diari d’Andorra, 18.09.24