Abstracts

Stage 1: Idea creation and evaluation

The aim in this section is to look at how business ideas are matched with credible opportunities, whether you’re starting from a perceived market or from a technology or competence that you’d like to commercialise. We emphasise the importance of considering a range of possibilities and evaluating each new idea with respect to existing alternatives already on the market, and perhaps modifying or improving it accordingly.

Stage 2: From idea to business proposition

This section looks at the broadening of an initial idea for a product, service or application into a rounded business strategy, by employing preferred witness research (see Chapter 4) to identify and roughly quantify a target market. We show you how to consider the opportunities or limitations of your prospective business environment (Chapter 5), how to protect your ideas and inventions from imitation by competitors (Chapter 6), and how to draw on this information to shape a commercial strategy (Chapter 7).

Stage 3: Proof of concept

This section covers ways to demonstrate and test your business proposition, both technically and commercially, through prototyping and some rough and-ready market testing.

Stage 4: Marshalling resources

This section describes the resources – primarily human and financial – you need to bring a business to fruition, and discusses how to work out a strategy and roadmap for obtaining the most suitable resources at the right time.