How to discover and nurture your business idea into reality

Many ideas flow through the mind of an individual daily and ability to distil them could make you a fortune.

Between 50, 000 and 70, 000 ideas or thoughts per day, 35 or 48 thoughts per minute flow through the consciousness of an average person, some of these lend to business development, experts say.

Most of these ideas come in discordant tunes and like gold ore needs refining, fine-tuning and experimentation to yield results. Business ideas evolve in a similar way, of the tens of thousands of thoughts that cross a person’s consciousness forming heavy mental traffic, taking time to observe and nurture a select few in silence could generate tremendous economic outcomes in terms of generating small, medium enterprises.

For instance, watching her children grow up Bunmi Williams, founder and Chief Executive Officer of Ethan & Harriet, a small company that specialises in the production of educational toys needed to find a playful way of helping her children learn about who they are and to understand both the history and geography of Nigeria.

“I did not set out to start a business, initially. I just thought my children were growing up without a clear sense of both personal and national identity. A lot of thoughts crossed my mind on how to go about this, and then I decided to create toys to help them. This has never been my life’s dream” said Williams.

In less than three years, an idea born of motherly concern to educate children employs 10 people. This reduces the number of unemployed by 10 and small businesses such as Bunmi’s are needed for sustainable economic growth in Nigeria.

A recent survey conducted by the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency (SMEDAN) in conjunction with the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed over 100 percent increase in the number of Small and Medium Enterprises between 2010 and 2013. The increase was from 17.2 million in 2010 to 37 million in 2013.

Small and Medium businesses are those that turnover of less than N100 million annually and/or employs less than 300 employees. Studies by the International Finance Corporation (IFC) showed that about 96 percent of Nigerian businesses are SMEs compared to 53 percent in the United States of America and 65 percent in Europe.

It all starts with an idea and most entrepreneurs do not set out knowing precisely what they want to do. They simply decide they want to work for themselves. They start with a blank sheet of paper and look around for that fresh angle on an old idea or a new twist on an existing one.

With a bit of research, talking to people, and going online, they find the idea that works for them. Maybe a way to tweak someone else’s idea, modify a product that already exists, or offer a service packaged up in a slightly different way.

Rob Yeung, author of The Rules of Entrepreneurship, suggested that “one way of building a business is to look to your own talents. If you can do something with ease that others find difficult, you might be able to build a business on it. Don’t discount your talents just because you find they come naturally to you.”

“Another way to look for a winning business concept is to steal ideas from elsewhere” Yeung continued. “Don’t worry; you’re not going to be stealing anything literally. In business, appropriating someone else’s idea is usually called “best practice sharing” or “benchmarking”. Business people do it all the time; copying the best of what someone else does, but trying to make it better.”

Above all start your business for the right reasons. It might sound strange, but there are actually plenty of bad reasons for wanting to start a business. Maybe you dislike responsibility, have problems with authority or just want an excuse to take naps in the middle of the day. But running a successful business takes hard work, determination and sticking out bad breaks and you would not be able to overcome these hurdles if you are in it for the wrong reasons.

If, on the other hand, you want to start a business because you have a true passion for what you do and you want to share a solution to your customers’ real needs, you are much more likely to start out on the right path.

STEPHEN ONYEKWELU