I was recently speaking at an EEDA conference (East of England Development Agency). The focus was on entrepreneurship.
Are new ideas necessary for entrepreneurship? If you decide to open a corner shop in exactly the same way that corner shops operate everywhere, but do it in a new location, is that a new idea?
New ideas range from the one mentioned above to a really new software system. If we make the definition broad enough, then entrepreneurship does depend on new ideas.
By changing the letters of EEDA around, we come up with EDEA. What does this mean?
EDEA = Effective Design of Entrepreneurial Action.
So we have an idea and an edea.
This means that it is not enough just to have an idea. There also needs to be a ‘design’ of how that idea can be put into action.
The creation of the new word ‘edea’ leads to more focus and design effort in the design for action: “You have an idea - do you have an edea?”
Creative people always put the emphasis on the newness and novelty of the idea. Yet by definition novelty is a high risk to the listener or receiver.
Creative people would do better if they put the emphasis not on the novelty of the idea but on the benefits of the idea.
So we need another new word. This is ADEA (pronounced a-dea).
ADEA = Asset Demonstration for Evaluation Acceptance.
The design effort is now directed to ways of showing clearly the benefits and potential benefits of the idea: “This is a really new idea - it has never been thought of before; it is really original”; “This is not entirely new, but there are very considerable benefits and even more potential benefits from this idea; the benefits are as follows.”
The second idea is likely to get further than the first one. There is always a need to spell out the adea.
So we need IDEA, EDEA, ADEA.
It may be useful to spell out the obstacles and difficulties that might be encountered in putting the idea into action.
So we can have an ODEA.
ODEA = Obstacles and Difficulties Envisaged Ahead
What obstacles and difficulties can we foresee or envisage ahead? An obstacle may be something in the way. An obstacle or difficulty may be something lacking: lack of funds, lack of publicity, etc.
It is true that an odea may often be part of an edea. There may, however, be value in laying out the odea before designing the edea.
So we have a set of new words:
EDEA
ADEA
ODEA
