I was recently speaking at an EEDA conference (East of England Development Agency). The focus was on entrepreneurship - a great deal of entrepreneurial activity already takes place in the area around Cambridge University, and elsewhere in the East of England. 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?
If you set out to run an insurance business exactly as other people do, but more efficiently at every level, is that a new idea?
New ideas range from the ones mentioned above to a really new software system. If we make the definition broad enough, then entrepreneurship does depend on new ideas. There is no need to be too philosophical about the nature of 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 person with the original idea may also have the edea. Sometimes a partner or someone else may need to design the edea. This may require more experience than the originator possesses.
As much creativity and effort may need to be put into the edea as into the idea. An idea that cannot be acted on is not worth much, Equally, action skills without ideas are not of high value.
An edea covers all aspects of putting an idea ‘into action’. This includes finance, mechanisms, people, resources, corporate structure, etc. There might even develop an agency which specialises in edeas. In a sense, that is what is done by venture capitalists who provide more than just money.
Trying to break into an established market with a new product that is somewhat better than the dominant existing product requires a well thought through edea (pronounced e-dea).
The originators of creative ideas are not always good at originating edeas. This is partly due to lack of interest and partly due to lack of experience. There may also be ignorance of the field.
In general, the creative effort is directed at having the new idea. There is much less interest in designing the edea. The edea is usually seen as someone else’s business.
NEW WORD
Once a new word is created, then it becomes possible to focus attention on that matter. So the creation of the new word ‘edea’ leads to more focus and design effort in the design for action. We can indeed describe the process in existing words, but there is much less of a focusing effect.
....’You have an idea - do you have an edea?’
....’I like your idea - let us see if we can design an edea’
....’Your idea is good, but your edea is very weak’
....This is my idea - and this is my edea’
....’You have not put as much thought into your edea as you have put into your idea’
Note that the pronunciation stresses the ‘i’ in idea and the ‘e’ in edea.
ACCEPTANCE
Creative people always put the emphasis on the newness and novelty of the idea. This gives them achievement satisfaction and ego satisfaction. Yet by definition novelty is a high risk to the listener or receiver.
People in advertising rarely have new ideas, because marketing managers rarely want to risk a really new idea. What they want is an idea that has already been shown to work - but with enough change or twist to make it seem new. That is a tough strategy for advertising creators.
Creative people would do better if they put the emphasis not on the novelty of the idea but on the benefits of the idea. Novelty is high-risk and easy to resist. The potential benefits of an idea are of much more interest to the listener. Potential benefits are much harder to resist.
ANOTHER NEW WORD
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 (you can think of ‘add’ even though the pronunciation uses the second ‘a’).
So we need IDEA, EDEA, ADEA.
(We can take it even further, though this additional concept is not strictly necessary).
OBSTACLES
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
(There is a UDEA, but that would only complicate things at this moment).
