As an established economic gateway to Southeast Asia, starting a business in Singapore definitely takes time and effort on the part of a business owner. After careful decision-making, you are now on your way to pursue your plans of starting your very own business. But before you start preparing all documentary requirements, ask yourself, what’s the BIG idea?
To further help you on your venture, we have rounded up a couple of tips and points to consider while brainstorming for new ideas.
1. Know yourself more.
As Entrepreneur Media’s book Start Your Own Business states, getting in touch with your passions, beliefs, and insights is a good starting point because this paves the way for you to come up with the main reason that will drive you to establish your big business idea.
2. Let your ideas flow.
Creative business ideas are born not by thinking outside the box, but rather from thinking like a box does not exist at all. When it comes to starting a business, no idea is too big, too small, or too peculiar. In fact, coming up with unique ideas will work to your advantage, so long as this will be supported by a strong value proposition.
3. Think long term.
Chris Garden and Catherine Blackburn, authors of the book Employee to Entrepreneur: How to Ditch the Day Job and Start Your Own Company, encourages aspiring entrepreneurs to search for long-term business opportunities and not just ride on short-term fads.
Potential for further growth and stability plays a role of great importance in one’s business. Ask yourself, where do you see your business ten years from now? You must consider this school of thought, especially when creating your business roadmap.
4. Search and discover new niches.
Bookrenter.com founder Colin Barceloux advises startup business owners to observe and determine what aspect of an existing product or service that they have previously availed frustrates them. Apart from having unique business ideas, individuals who are starting a business may also consider looking through the gaps that large and established companies might have missed, and fill them. Wishing to have a product or service to meet very specific needs? Why not create it when you can’t find it anywhere. You might even be surprised that there are also lots of people looking for your solution.
5. Do not be afraid to play around existing ideas.
In relation to finding and discovering new niches, you can also consider playing around and modifying existing concepts and ideas to make them appropriate for your target market.
Clayton Christiensen, a professor at Harvard School of Business calls this ‘disruptive innovation’ which essentially means giving a whole new population access to a product or service that were only accessible to a small group of consumers or a higher-tier market.
Many startup business succeed by simply tweaking an existing concept to make it more accessible, more efficient, or more affordable.
6. Gather insights.
In any process, gathering feedback is an essential tool in order to make necessary changes that will significantly improve a company’s slew of products and services. In your venture to start a business, you should also consider talking to family, friends, or a group of people who are knowledgeable in your field of choice.
By doing this, you can check if you have overseen a significant detail or if you can perhaps throw in an alternative concept to your marketing mix that will affect the overall performance of your company.
7. Stay inspired.
This might seem a bit of a surprise, but quite a huge number of startup businesses are rooted into a concept that is not totally new. Rather, these business owners ultimately found success by simply keeping their eyes wide open and casually observing small details that most people might simply not notice.
To exercise your critical thinking skills, try keeping a handy journal for spur of the moment ideas. As David Cohen of Tech Stars puts it, great business ideas do not usually arise while you are comfortably sitting down and thinking about the meaning of life.
Starting a business in Singapore is not rocket science as long as you continuously practice creative thinking and engaging your mind in a variety of ways that would help you generate limitless ideas.
In a nutshell, your big business idea must fill a gap, must solve a problem normally encountered by your target consumers and must be accessible, on top of it all. At the end of the day, the success of a business lies on the consumers’ mindset whether your product or service is worth availing.
