business ideas

When do managers need a new business idea? How do they know that a new idea might be better than the one they already have? When should they stop looking for new ideas?

These are very difficult questions. In practice, however, they never arise. They never arise because, in practice, we look at the information, then use our experience, analysis and judgment to reach an outcome.

Since this outcome is ‘correct’, then we are right. Since we are right, there is no need or place for a different idea, because you cannot be more right than right.

This attitude is derived from our maths lesson in school. There is the problem. There is the data. You work it out and reach the right answer. There cannot be any other answer. For the rest of our lives we believe in the validity of this process.

TOTALLY WRONG

Unfortunately this belief is totally wrong and very dangerous. Outside of maths lessons there are many possible answers. The first right answer is not necessarily the best. Nor does this first answer exclude other, much better answers.

This is an important lesson that executives and others need to learn. Naturally they are very reluctant to learn the lesson. Once you lose faith in your first right answer being the only possible answer, then you are adrift.

• How do you find better answers?

• How do you know the newer answers are better than the first one?

• When do you stop looking?

As a result of such doubts, most executives have no time for additional ideas. It is enough to be ‘right’. That way you can take others with you. That way you cannot be blamed.

DIFFERENT IDEAS

China is said to be short of 100 million women. For 29 years China has had a ‘one child policy’. This means that each family can only have a single child. If the child happens to be a girl, then often this child somehow disappears - through adoption or other ways. The result is a shortage of women. Perhaps this does not matter if the overall aim is to reduce the population. Less women means less breeding and less children.

So perhaps the original idea is even more successful than it would seem. There could, however, be different
ideas.

Every family could be allowed to have as many children as they liked - until they had a boy, and then they would stop. At first it may seem that there would be many more girls than boys. But not so. At the moment of conception there is an equal chance of the foetus being male or female (unless the water is very hard).

Since no child is being killed, the equal balance will persist and so there will be equal boys and girls in the population. On average there would be two children per family. This is less than replacement, which needs 2.2 children.

The result is that there would be a declining population of equal boys and girls. And every family would have the chance of having a boy (for work or ancestral purposes).

CONGESTION CHARGE

In London there is a congestion charge which motorists have to pay to enter the centre of the city. If the purpose is to raise money, this is a form of taxation. If the purpose is to reduce traffic, the idea does not work very well.

Since the charge is moderate (£5), motorists get used to paying it. If the charge were made so expensive that motorists really felt the pain, that would be a political liability.

There is a different idea. Everyone within a certain radius of London (or who works there) gets a free permit to drive into the centre of London. But to drive in you need to display four permits.

So you arrange to share a car with three friends. Or you buy or hire a permit from someone else. That someone else gets paid for leaving his or her car at home. This way you surely reduce traffic by three-quarters. Moreover, many people will now be getting paid for leaving their cars at home.

SETS OF GLASSES

I once suggested to Waterford Glass that it should sell sets of glasses in which every glass is different. The idea is that, if each glass is different, it now becomes possible to give one or two glasses as a present. If glasses are uniform, you have to give a whole set or nothing.

This would open up a huge new market for the company.

We totally undervalue new ideas. We do this for the reasons listed above. We do this because we do not understand creativity.

Yet new ideas are by far the cheapest way to get extra sales and more profits. New ideas are far cheaper than technical research. New ideas may simply rearrange existing assets and capabilities.

SO?

So we need to treat the possibility of new ideas more seriously. New ideas are indeed different from facts and information - they are less tangible and less reliable. New ideas, however, can be very valuable both in saving money and in making profits.

Every organisation needs to be clear about its attitude to new business ideas. To say that ‘ideas will turn up from time to time’ is very feeble. To assume that all new ideas will come from the research and development department is simply wrong. That is not what research and development is about.

There are three things that can be done.

• The first is to set up a structure for encouraging and creating new ideas.

• The second is to learn the skills of lateral thinking, which is a deliberate form of creativity.

• The third is to come and ask me for new ideas if you cannot generate enough yourself.

‘Additional thinking’ always has a value - even if it is only reassurance that your ideas are good.

POSSIBILITY

When the whole of education and practice has been pointed towards truth and certainty, it is indeed hard to grasp the value and mechanisms of ‘possibility’. But without ‘possibility’ you cannot progress.

The early progress of China came to an end when the Chinese came to believe that you could move from certainty to certainty without needing possibility. The same thing is happening in the West today with the belief that information and analysis are enough, and that possibility is not needed.