Some aspects of the market opportunity evaluation of the new tech idea

Most of the entrepreneurs prefer to get opportunity evaluation of their idea before they start investing their time, money and good will in its development.  Most of them believe that their idea is the best and unbeatable, so the process of evaluation is only to strengthen their belief.

But unfortunately, professional evaluation may have more than one “happy ending” result.

To be prepared to the process, have a look at this article: http://www.venturechoice.com/articles/opportunity_evaluation.htm 

If the evaluator rejects the idea/concept, it can have different outcomes.

1. The first and the most predictable one is that the entrepreneur will leave the idea and pass to another one. This way the entrepreneur loses the idea and the world loses the opportunity to see a new technological product or service.

The entrepreneur may even take this failure very personally and consider himself a loser. This outcome is not new, and the most difficult part in it is that the entrepreneur should prepare himself to accept the verdict and the outcomes. Each entrepreneur falls in love with his idea and as a person who is in love with someone/thing he may not see the flaws in his idea. If he decides to evaluate his idea he has to bear in mind that it is the idea and not he personally is surpassing the process. In the end, there are so many other ideas that one can think of!

 2. Another entrepreneur can try to fix the idea by slightly, but constantly changing it. The process of the improvement can continue until the idea proves to be executable, accomplishable, feasible and practicable. This entrepreneur will lose some time and energy, but will gain the proven concept.

Cooper’s Stage-Gate process (Cleveland 2005) points out two major stages of idea evaluation. The first one is called Opportunity Identification. It is the original screening of the idea at the stage when the Idea is generated. The second one is called Opportunity Investigation. It provides the second screening of the idea  in between the stages of Preliminary Investigation of the Idea and its Detailed Investigation.

What one can easily learn from Cooper’s process is that the idea is nor something static. 

The site  http://www.prod-dev.com/stage-gate.php  provides statistics in the field of New Product Development. It states, that “an estimated 46% of the resources that companies devote to the conception, development and launch of new products go to projects that do not succeed – they fail in the marketplace or never make it to market”.

And if one wants to make his idea to see the world in its best form, one will have to elaborate it, widen it, bring more and more context into it, continuously estimate its market opportunity and only then carry it out and continue to evaluate and adjust it till it reaches the market.

Here is my TIP:

If you are undergoing the process of evaluation of your idea,

1. Try to look at your idea as a professional, not as the owner. Bring as much knowledge in the field of your invention as possible to have a real good value evaluation.

2. If the evaluation fails, don’t take it personally. Choose to leave the idea or elaborate it.

3. If you choose to leave the idea, make the decision consciously and not out of fear and despair.

4. If you choose to elaborate the idea, prepare yourself to an endless way of idea/concept incarnations. Sometimes you’ll be surprised to learn, that the product that reaches the market is quite different from your original idea. The only thing that matters, is  that it is yours and you made it!