If you don’t have your idea right away, it’s OK. It is important to take your time, think about it and then take the necessary steps, that we will guide you through.
Select a product that you feel you could market to other Kids, 9-14, online over the Internet. Your product is a “digital file” of “information only” or a “content product”. Information only means that your product can be e-mailed, displayed online or downloaded.
This means, you do not have to invent a product that needs to be manufactured and shipped. You can obtain many ideas, just from reviewing other products you currently purchase.
How to Come Up with a Great Idea
Look through a book or magazine, think of interests you might have and brainstorm (thinking of ideas by yourself or with a group of other people)! Let your imagination go wild! The possibilities are endless!
Examples to consider for products to market are your favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe, a craft (something you make by hand), something you imagine, a book review, your advice, a story told to you by friends or family, ways to increase your allowance, opinion on something that is important to you, cool things to do, experiments, song suggestions, jokes, school projects, stories , or something that you think would interest other kids.
You will probably find that many product ideas already exist, but you could adopt them or innovate.(change them or make them better) That means, that you could create your own version of a product and market it. Other Kids will enjoy reading, learning and using your product in many ways.
It is a good time to look at “Put Your Thinking Hat On” to help you do some green-hat thinking about products – creative thinking.
Brainstorming
Brainstorming is a great way to come up with ideas. The goal of brainstorming is to come up with a long list of “crazy ideas”. Brainstorming gets people to think in ways they don’t normally. It is important to have fun and not criticize (don’t say, “what a stupid idea”). The basic rules are:
- Quantity, not quality (more is better); it is important to generate as many ideas as possible and don’t worry how good they are at this stage.
- No ideas can be criticized and no idea is too wild to write down. Remember they are all good ideas at this stage.
- It doesn’t matter who came up with the idea first, work together to build on it and generate more ideas.
Additional brainstorming techniques.
Scratching the Itch
A good start is to get the “itch” to find new & better ideas and ways of doing things. You need to look at things in a critical way. Challenge products by thinking you could do it differently. You may find yourself saying things like, “That’s kind of dumb”, “I can do it better,” “Why do people waste their time on that”, “There must be a better way” or “I can do this for kids”. This is how TeachingKidsBusiness.com got started. There is a lot of information and a number of ways to learn and gain business experience for adults, but not for kids. Once you start thinking this way, you are well on your way to coming up with ideas.
Now that you have the “itch”, all you need is confidence. Hang in there and do the necessary work to generate good ideas. Come up with a lot of ideas and start reviewing or testing them to see if you think they can work.
Group Creativity
You may find that it is hard to come up with ideas on your own. It’s OK to get a little help. Try and get a group of friends or family members together, to brainstorm some ideas. Here are some helpful tips:
- Start with telling everyone what they are supposed to think about.Then, take a moment and tell them about the things that you enjoy and are good at doing. As stated before, you are trying to create a product that is “content only” or “written information” for your business. You do not have to invent a product that needs to be manufactured and shipped, but one that will be viewed and/or e-mailed to people. Examples are things like articles you would see in magazines or newspapers, recipes, sports reviews, your opinion on something important to you like pollution, jokes, school projects, music group/song review.
- Have each person write down as many ideas as he or she can think of, working silently on individual pieces of paper.
- Share the ideas with the group by having each person read theirs aloud to the group, or by having one person read them all.
- Have a question and answer period, where people can ask about the ideas that are presented and have the person that came up with the product, explain it to make sure everyone understands the concept.
- Have a vote for the best idea. You can vote by raising your hands, or by having everyone write down their favorite idea and add up the results.
Keep in mind, final decision is yours and that the idea you choose, should be one you are very comfortable in developing. After all, when the group leaves, you are the one that has to make it work!