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How Do You Find New Problems to Solve or Ideas for Products To Work On?

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31–40 of 44 posts

Re: How Do You Find New Problems to Solve or Ideas for Products To Work On?

#32
Trying to force yourself to think of a solution to a problem your having almost always ends up disastrous, from my personal experience. The ideas might be good but I've never personally found a brilliant solution taking these methods. When an idea is sporadic and completely natural it encompasses the idea of simplicity and originality and these two ideas are an excellent platform to build products or solutions off of. I have had so many forced ideas that I regret moving forward with a few months down the road because the original idea wasn't a strong enough base to start from.

Re: How Do You Find New Problems to Solve or Ideas for Products To Work On?

#33
These are the keywords - See, Observe, Understand, Analyze. Finding news ideas or problems to solve is a way of thinking that anyone can learn. For me, it is now a part of my nature. I always try to be curious to know about things around me - much like a child. This world is not perfect and it will never be. There will always be room for improvement. I always make a conscious effort to think about what's missing and how can I improve anything.

Also, keep sharpening your axe by learning new skills whether it is technology, art, science, management, marketing or anything else. The more you know, more you will be able to find and notice brilliant ideas that will pass through you.

Re: How Do You Find New Problems to Solve or Ideas for Products To Work On?

#34

They come to me every few days. Ideas for inventions, ideas for startups, ideas for websites, ideas for designs. It's too much. As soon as I start working on one, another comes to me. So it's kind of like torture. Ideas just keep coming and I find it hard to settle down and commit myself to one. I wish I had a whole bunch of money and just paid people to make them all. But it doesn't work that way. I think it's my ne…

As soon as I start working on one, another comes to me. So it's kind of like torture. Ideas just keep coming and I find it hard to settle down and commit myself to one. I wish I had a whole bunch of money and just paid people to make them all. But it doesn't work that way.

I can relate to that. I am having more than a dozen very good ideas(at least I think so). They keep coming and try to take my focus away from my current project.

Re: How Do You Find New Problems to Solve or Ideas for Products To Work On?

#35
1) The starting point is always the observation of anomalies in an existing system or pattern. 2) You reason on those anomalies in your head, alone. 3) You come up with a possible response, alone. 4) You visualize in your head how this response would actually works. This should be practiced until you see it working smoothly from beginning to end. You do this alone. 5) Finally you set to work in order to bring this response into our physical world. Either alone or in a group-work

Re: How Do You Find New Problems to Solve or Ideas for Products To Work On?

#36

One of the ways is to go out of your niche. Out of the high tech stuff, and see what "ordinary" people with uncool professions need. Other option is to transfer ideas from one niche to another - it may look odd and weird at first but then lots of ideas will pop up. I even do get some of my ideas from TV. From the news. From seeing a problem or someone's business model that can be transferred elsewhere.

Thanks for your help. Well how do you get out of that niche? Using the below comment as example, seems like it can be a bit risky not having domain expertise entering something new, right? I guess it can help to have a partner who know's the niche, just wondering how you can avoid choosing the real estate industry to find out the grass isn't that green.

Re: How Do You Find New Problems to Solve or Ideas for Products To Work On?

#38
post #22

After a handful of side projects that never got the traction I was hoping for, I came upon Bret Victor's recent CUSEC talk on principle based inventing. Unless you're lucky enough to stumble on an idea that has instant traction, any path to success is going to be hard, with lots of periods of self/market-doubt, and lots of opportunities to quit. I think the only way to get through those times is pursuing an idea that…

what side projects have u launched?

Re: How Do You Find New Problems to Solve or Ideas for Products To Work On?

#39
post #34

They come to me every few days. Ideas for inventions, ideas for startups, ideas for websites, ideas for designs. It's too much. As soon as I start working on one, another comes to me. So it's kind of like torture. Ideas just keep coming and I find it hard to settle down and commit myself to one. I wish I had a whole bunch of money and just paid people to make them all. But it doesn't work that way. I think it's my ne…

As soon as I start working on one, another comes to me. So it's kind of like torture. Ideas just keep coming and I find it hard to settle down and commit myself to one. I wish I had a whole bunch of money and just paid people to make them all. But it doesn't work that way. I can relate to that. I am having more than a dozen very good ideas(at least I think so). They keep coming and try to take my focus away from my c…

what are some of those ideas u can share?

Re: How Do You Find New Problems to Solve or Ideas for Products To Work On?

#40
I mainly work as a janitor so I think all day. Ideas come into my head constitly. The only problem was I would forget the the time I got home. So I started emailing my facebook account everytime I get a idea. Know the problem I have is I got alot of projects to work on. The good thing is most sound good in my head, but when I get started on them they suck so I ether drop them or add the good parts to other projects
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