All of us get ideas [many of them daily get plenty of ideas ] and feel that we can create a business out of it, but many of those ideas cannot be transformed into businesses. May be some don’t make any Business sense at all, some cannot be taken up full-time [ but may be help you in getting some additional income].
Blogging is a good example; it can be thought of as a hobby or a past-time or a way to Change the World , but very difficult to go full time into blogging 
May be this question would be rightly answered by any of the full-time bloggers in the Blogosphere.
There are a couple of ideas that each and every one of us work on , but very few of them can materialize into a full-time startup.
In my current read Harvard Business Essentials , Jeffry Timmons; a leading expert on Entrepreneurship has highlighted 5 Characteristics that any Business Opportunity [ Product/Service ] should possess to certify it as a business.
- Creates significant value for customers by solving a significant problem or filling a significant unmet need for which they are willing to pay the premium.
- Offers significant potential to the Entrepreneur and investors – enough to meet their risk/reward expectations.
- Represents a good fit with the capabilities of the founder and the management team i.e. something in which they have the experience or the skills to pursue.
- Is durable – the opportunity for profits will persist over a reasonable length of time – something that is not based on a momentary craze or a need that will quickly disappear.
- Opportunity that might be eligible for financing.Though the funding scene is very different, yet a commercial idea at least gets the eyes of investors [ if not all, at least few of them ]
Reader Contribution:
1. An article covered in Forbes : Is your great idea a real business [Thanks Nithya Dayal]
2. Few of the points that I missed are:
Passion and Patience of the Entrepreneurial team [Thanks Manoj Awasthi]
2. Few of the points that I missed are:
Passion and Patience of the Entrepreneurial team [Thanks Manoj Awasthi]
Everyday many business idea arises due to competitions. I found your blog useful to know few ideas.
Hey,
@Kausar: Thanks for visiting my blog and thanks for the compliment 🙂
-Himanshu Sheth
These are very good points. Thank you for the information.
Hey,
@Kaizen Consulting Blog:
Thanks for the appreciation and it is great to see that you found those points useful.
-Himanshu Sheth
Nice article. The follwong is another great read about ideas n their business potential http://tinyurl.com/5doj3x posted in the OCC thread
Hey,
@Nithya: Thanks very much for visiting my blog.I did have a look at that article and found it pretty much interesting.
-Himanshu Sheth
Nice post. Valid bullets. but they are too obvious – aren’t they? A needed solution, Profitable business model, good resources (team), durability and finally funding.
There are full time bloggers also (Amit Aggarwal, Labnol) who are pursuing blogging as profession. I do agree that it starts with hobby but so are many.. one-two-three men businesses do start like that..
Passion and Patience elements are missing there – I am talking about it because in the hindsight, it rarely occurs that you know (and are too sure of) that your idea is a real real need of the customers, is going to be a ‘Google’, have no ifs-buts in success etc.. not normally the case I think..
Hey,
@Nithya: I have added the Forbes link to my article. Thanks for pointing it out.
-Himanshu Sheth
Hey,
@Manoj: Thanks for visiting my blog.I took the example of blogging since I have come across lot of college guys who want to become full time bloggers(just thinking that their blog would click instantly and they would earn money from the beginning).
So,this is a wrong wave which is going across them.
IMHO, there are lot of bloggers around but few full time bloggers, and also how many of them really make name like Amit Agarwal 🙂
You touched upon an important point called “Patience” and I have added the same to my article[in the Reader’s contribution list].
Thanks again and hope to see you again on my blog.
-Himanshu Sheth
Hmm the context relates to thi product YouSuggest, which was recently released. It helps corporations deploy a social-suggestion-platform to populate ideas and also vote on them. see here: http://www.latticepurple.com
–
shyam