Hi all,
I've been truly inspired by all of you here; yes even those of you that are struggling to figure out how to make the first step. I'm right there with you! For some people, like me, ideas are hard to come by when you're starting out and trying to change your mindset is the first big obstacle to breaking through to the fastlane. So first and foremost thank you to all of you for that.
Over the past few weeks, months, perhaps years even, I have always been trying to come up with ideas that lay outside of my core 9-5 experience. You see, daily I work as more of a PM/Manager in a technical capacity for a very, very, niche area of the media industry. I won't get into the various reasons why I've been focused outside of my expertise but suffice to say that it's likely because it was founded in stupidity, a desire to get out of the industry, underestimating the value I have in this area, or a combination of all three. Anyway, this morning on my way to work I was listening to an audio book as I usually do (The Education of Millionaires by Michael Ellsberg in this case) and my mind wandered to some 9-5 work.
A customer of ours indicated that they would like to use our company's data in a certain way, and then the idea hit me. I figured out how this could be done better! I continued with the thought process of determining what other value could be provided by growing the capabilities of this idea. What I've come up with is an idea to bring together 3-4 different sets of data into one system and presenting it into a dashboard-ish way to help analyze and gain insights. It doesn't sound that revolutionary, but no one else is out there doing this. The idea creates a bridge between the technical department and the business end. One of the sets of data would be created by the system and the others would just pull data from other databases at the customers site. The data set created by the system would require hardware to do it (high barrier of entry due to the technical aspects) but thankfully there are companies out there that already do what I need for the most part!
So, rather than investing a ton of time and money that I don't have to overcome the high barrier of entry and bring this idea to reality, I'm thinking of trying to license it to the company(s) in the industry that supply that part with the highest barrier of entry (Thanks Stephen M Key!). IMO it would create a very valuable selling proposition for them and highly leverage their current install base for up-selling opportunities which would generate new revenue from past customers. It also elevates their product from being a purely technical tool and into generating business insights, which could be more lucrative for them although despite being outside of their current niche.
There's an industry trade show/conference happening in a few months. I figure that gives me a bit of time to vet the idea and refresh myself with what I need to do to pitch a licensing deal. It's been a while since I've read Stephen's book. I'll contact the companies before the trade show and set up meetings to pitch them the idea and shop it around. If needed I have a network of industry contacts that I can leverage to help get me in touch with the decision makers in these companies.
I hope this little message can help to bring some value to others on the forum. I'm new and learning so my contributions to the forum at this stage are somewhat limited. I'll be sure to document my experiences with this idea as it evolves.
Fingers crossed that this will work!
Mike
I've been truly inspired by all of you here; yes even those of you that are struggling to figure out how to make the first step. I'm right there with you! For some people, like me, ideas are hard to come by when you're starting out and trying to change your mindset is the first big obstacle to breaking through to the fastlane. So first and foremost thank you to all of you for that.
Over the past few weeks, months, perhaps years even, I have always been trying to come up with ideas that lay outside of my core 9-5 experience. You see, daily I work as more of a PM/Manager in a technical capacity for a very, very, niche area of the media industry. I won't get into the various reasons why I've been focused outside of my expertise but suffice to say that it's likely because it was founded in stupidity, a desire to get out of the industry, underestimating the value I have in this area, or a combination of all three. Anyway, this morning on my way to work I was listening to an audio book as I usually do (The Education of Millionaires by Michael Ellsberg in this case) and my mind wandered to some 9-5 work.
A customer of ours indicated that they would like to use our company's data in a certain way, and then the idea hit me. I figured out how this could be done better! I continued with the thought process of determining what other value could be provided by growing the capabilities of this idea. What I've come up with is an idea to bring together 3-4 different sets of data into one system and presenting it into a dashboard-ish way to help analyze and gain insights. It doesn't sound that revolutionary, but no one else is out there doing this. The idea creates a bridge between the technical department and the business end. One of the sets of data would be created by the system and the others would just pull data from other databases at the customers site. The data set created by the system would require hardware to do it (high barrier of entry due to the technical aspects) but thankfully there are companies out there that already do what I need for the most part!
So, rather than investing a ton of time and money that I don't have to overcome the high barrier of entry and bring this idea to reality, I'm thinking of trying to license it to the company(s) in the industry that supply that part with the highest barrier of entry (Thanks Stephen M Key!). IMO it would create a very valuable selling proposition for them and highly leverage their current install base for up-selling opportunities which would generate new revenue from past customers. It also elevates their product from being a purely technical tool and into generating business insights, which could be more lucrative for them although despite being outside of their current niche.
There's an industry trade show/conference happening in a few months. I figure that gives me a bit of time to vet the idea and refresh myself with what I need to do to pitch a licensing deal. It's been a while since I've read Stephen's book. I'll contact the companies before the trade show and set up meetings to pitch them the idea and shop it around. If needed I have a network of industry contacts that I can leverage to help get me in touch with the decision makers in these companies.
I hope this little message can help to bring some value to others on the forum. I'm new and learning so my contributions to the forum at this stage are somewhat limited. I'll be sure to document my experiences with this idea as it evolves.
Fingers crossed that this will work!
Mike
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