Brainstorming is the process of generating several ideas about a specific topic. The approaches range from a person sitting down with a yellow legal pad and jotting down business ideas to formal “brainstorming sessions” that are led by moderators and involve a group of people. In a formal brainstorming session, the leader of the group asks the participants to share their ideas. One person shares an idea, a second person reacts to it, a third person reacts to the reaction, and so on. A flip chart or whiteboard is typically used to record the ideas. A productive brainstorming session is freewheeling and lively and is intended to generate as many substantive ideas as possible.^[1]

Brainstorming sessions can also be informal. For example, during the creation of Proactiv, a popular acne treatment product, Dr. Katie Rodan, one of the company’s founders, hosted dinner parties at her house and conducted brainstorming sessions with guests. Rodan credits these sessions with helping her and her cofounder develop ideas that shaped Proactiv and moved the process of starting the company along.^[2] Another approach to brainstorming is to utilize the three sources for business ideas discussed in Truth 6, “The most common sources of business ideas.” Imagine this. Suppose you are part of a small group that is trying to brainstorm ideas for a new type of fitness center. You create three columns on a whiteboard labeled Changing Environmental Trends, Unsolved Problems, and Gaps in the Marketplace. After brainstorming ideas in each category, a pattern jumps out at you: The population is aging, older people are increasingly interested in fitness, and many of the machines and classes taught in traditional fitness centers aren’t suitable for the 50+ demographic. Based on this pattern, your first solid idea is to create a fitness center designed specifically for people 50 years old and older.

A second approach to generating business ideas is to conduct library and Internet research. A natural tendency is to think that an idea should be chosen and the process of researching the idea should then begin. The problem is that this approach is too linear. Often the best business ideas emerge when the general notion of an idea, like opening an innovative type of fitness center, is merged with extensive library and Internet research. This combination of activities is likely to provide insights into the best types of fitness centers to start.

Often the best business ideas emerge when the general notion of an idea is merged with extensive library and internet research.

The best approach to utilizing a library is to discuss your general area of interest with a reference librarian, who can point you to useful resources, such as industry-specific magazines, trade journals, and reports. Simply browsing through several issues of a trade journal on a topic can spark new ideas. Powerful search engines and databases are also available through most university and large public libraries. An example is IBIS World, a company that publishes market research on all industries and subcategories within industries. IBIS World is a fee-based service but is normally free if accessed through a library. IBIS World has literally dozens of pages on the health and fitness club industry alone. Spending time reading this information could spark new ideas for fitness centers or help flesh out an existing idea.

Internet research is also important. If you’re starting from scratch, simply type “new business ideas” into Google or Yahoo! to bring up links to newspaper and magazine articles that talk about the latest new business ideas. While these types of articles are general in nature, they provide a starting point. If you have a specific idea in mind, like the fitness center concept we’ve been discussing, a useful technique is to set up a Google or Yahoo e-mail alert using keywords that pertain to your topic of interest. Google and Yahoo! e-mail alerts are e-mail updates of the latest Google or Yahoo! results (that is, press releases, news articles, blog postings) based on your topic. This technique, which is available for free, will feed you a daily stream of news articles and blog postings about specific topics.

While some people are inclined to select a business idea too quickly, other people have the opposite problem—they have trouble coming up with a sensible business idea. If this happens to you, don’t get discouraged. Business ideas often take time to develop. Many people brainstorm and conduct various forms of library and Internet research for weeks or months before they settle on a specific idea.