A good place to start this is things you're personally dissatisfied with. Develop a healthy sense of annoyance with the things you use. Start to look for things thought you ought to find really annoying but don't because you've gotten used to them.
I've found it surprising how much this can be honed like any other skill. At first thinking up ideas seems difficult, then suddenly you've got a queue of things you want to build because you're annoyed. Then you go through the queue for things that other people are likely to be dissatisfied with as well.
Hopefully once you're at that point you're better equipped to spot broken stuff that you don't necessarily use (or even want to use). My guess is that not being put up their own online store was not a pain point for Paul and Robert but years of building whatever tools like lacked helped them spot it as a problem others were having.
Or questions that shouldn't be answerable but aren't.
Also, mashing up two abstractions is a good way to narrow down the solution space you are interested in.
For example, IT combines information with technology. PT combines people with technology. CP combines communication with people. TT combines two technologies.
Each mashup has a different set of value propositions that work well with it. IT generally uses tech to manipulate information to answer a question or help people make sense of something. PT generally revolves around augmenting human ability. etc.
One of the best sources for me has been from contract work. For example, if someone is annoyed enough with the software they are currently using to pay me 10 grand to replace it, then there is a good chance that there is a market opportunity there.
I have lots of ideas. Then I choose the ones that keep coming up as trends, or correlate with things my friends say.
I would say about ninety nine percent of my ideas are really bad or crazy sounding. When I look back at my notebooks, most of my ideas are juvenile, ill-concieved, and smack of mental illness. But there are always a few golden ideas glinting amongst them.
I warn people against concentrating on good ideas because that prevents them from practicing the raw creation of ideas. Good ideas will be revealed as your collection of raw ideas interacts with the world.
Has anyone ever heard of the "strategy by guidelines" and the "Tangible Vision" approach? Start by understanding what one wants in terms of the outcome and then develop a set of guidelines based on achieving the outcomes. Uses a mindmap software to draw out the scheme. Slowly start making connections between the outcome and the approach of completing the outcome (milestone by milestone). Without any project mgmt strategy, most developers are just guessing on their objectives and the approach.
Whenever you run into a frustration in the world write it down. Then later when your trawling for ideas come back to that list and find a solution that will make the frustration go away.
I've found that the most effective way to come up with ideas is to spend some time alone writing down ideas, usually "aha!" moments that occur while I am doing something completely unrelated. Usually the idea scratches a personal itch I have. After that, I've found that bouncing the idea off of co-founders helps to assert (or reject) that it is a valid business opportunity. How about you guys? What methodology works best for you?
Check this excellent book by Kevin O'Connor, the founder of DoubleClick. He explains his own process for finding ideas and the mistakes that a lot of people do when choosing their own ideas. It's an eye opener.
- make things for yourself & solve your own problems
- take notes in notebook
- observe from nature
- don't be obstinate (in-flexible)
- revise your ideas & filter
- listen to your users
The thing is some ideas are crap. Others maybe ok. But it's what you do with the idea that matters. Turn the idea to a demo. Release the demo and see how many users pick it up. Re-visit your old ideas
It's how quickly you can turn idea to demo. Unleash your ideas in the form of a demo on your users. You'll find out quickly if they are crap or not.
