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Speaking as an anthropologist: go into the field. I bet very few great ideas came from behind a desk. Ask people with jobs you don’t know much about simple ques
by stfwn 9y ago
Speaking as an anthropologist: go into the field. I bet very few great ideas came from behind a desk. Ask people with jobs you don’t know much about simple questions that are not directly aimed at finding out what you can sell them. Be genuinely interested in their day.
“What do you do first when you get to work?”, “Do you dress a certain way?”, “Do you eat with co-workers or alone?”, “Do you like to go outside during the day?”, “What are your thoughts on <habit x/y/z>?”.
It surprises me time and time again how deep a seemingly simple line of work turns out to be, and how many simple things are in a complex job. If you ask many questions, something that you have good thoughts about on is bound to pop up.
- riazrizvi 9y agoAlso you could go into the field at different levels, right? Level 1: by canvassing random businesses asking about problems. Level 2: by attending conferences where business owners are open to discovering new solutions. Level 3: by crawling business forums where owners discuss specific problems they have. Level 4: by crawling reviews for solutions where business owners complain about specific problems they have with existing solutions.
- stfwn 9y agoI would try not to focus on ‘discovering problems’ when ‘going into the field’. Consider what you will get if you ask directly what someone's problems are: only the stuff everyone knows about and no one has solved in 200 years since the industrial revolution, ± 60 years since the first computers and ± 30 years since the commercialisation of the internet. They probably haven't been solved because there's some horrifying ROI maximalisation scheme behind it that you cannot beat, or solving the problem is terrible ROI for yourself. Going into the field anthropology-style means participatory observation; you join those that you are researching in whatever they are doing. You try to experience their world and uncover their interpretation of it. You make an honest attempt to blend in and almost become of them. And then you don't become one of them, because your being-different enables you to identify opportunities that others in that field cannot. And that is the stuff great ideas are made of.
- brucephillips 9y ago> Ask people with jobs you don’t know much about simple questions that are not directly aimed at finding out what you can sell them. I'd advise against this. Good product ideas usually come from a deep, subtle understanding of the problem domain, not by searching for new problems in markets you don't know anything about.