This document provides a 10-step guide for developing business ideas that stand out and will be selected by managers. The steps include defining a customer segment and problem, conducting interviews to validate the problem, brainstorming multiple solutions, understanding competition, creating a prototype, gathering feedback on the prototype from customers, and estimating the potential market size. The overall guide encourages validating problems with customers, developing tangible prototypes, and using metrics to communicate the potential of an idea.

1. curated by Vincent Pirenne
The Innovation Matrix.
Find the innovation strategy that best fits your
company.
curated by Zygi Krupskis
10 STEPS TO BUILD AWESOME BUSINESS IDEAS
THAT YOUR MANAGERS WILL PICK FROM THE CROWD

2. Board of Innovation
makes corporations innovate
like startups, mixing proven
methods from Design Thinking
and Lean Startup.
www.boardofinnovation.com
Feel free to tweak, fix,
remix any part of this work,
as long as it is for non-
commercial purposes.
Good karma on you if you
credit Board of Innovation.
Some of the clients with
whom we are proud to work:
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3. Everyone can come up with the next big idea.
Photo by Yvette de Wit on Unsplash

4. But you want your idea to...
Photo by Yvette de Wit on Unsplash

5. But you want your idea to... stand out from the crowd.
Photo by Yvette de Wit on Unsplash

6. We get managers complain to us quite often that
they are submerged by hundreds of ideas. Often
times, these ideas their employees come up with are
not tangible enough and are communicated poorly.
Hence, the managers can’t take action on those ideas.
On one side, managers feel
flooded with ideas
When we speak to employees in strategy or R&D
departments, they often complain that their ideas are
barely picked up by their managers.
On the other side, employees
see their ideas rarely picked up

7. Here’s a 10-steps guide to turn...
business
ideas
business
concepts
into
(which will stand out from the
crowd, and your manager will love)

8. Let’s start!

9. 1. Have you defined a customer segment
which you will focus on?
PROBLEM SPACE SOLUTION SPACE

10. Start with a clear
customer segment that
you want to target. It
will keep you in focus
and will make it easier
to come up with the
right solutions.
1. CUSTOMER SEGMENT & EARLY ADOPTERS

11. I’ve heard countless times that the idea is for
“everyone”. Solution for everyone is a solution for
no-one, therefore you should define your customer
segment a bit more in-depth. Why? If you try to
solve the problems of humanity right away,
chances are that it will be incredibly difficult.
Everyone who has a car.
People who own but barely drive their car
and use it only during the weekends.
1. CUSTOMER SEGMENT & EARLY ADOPTERS

12. Even Facebook, which
has now 1,5 billions
active users, didn’t start
to serve “everyone” in
the first place. Instead, it
started with a small target
audience: college students.
1. CUSTOMER SEGMENT & EARLY ADOPTERS

13. 2. Have you spotted a problem
that customer is having?
PROBLEM SPACE SOLUTION SPACE

14. Not every solution
has a problem.
A watering can that waters itself. A ctrl-alt-del
wand for unrensponsive Windows machines.
A... screen blind? A face jumper? Anyway... the
fact that you can think of these solutions doesn’t
imply they’ll solve a real problem.
2. PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION

15. Not every solution has
a problem, but every
problem has a solution.
Instead of starting with a solution for the selected
customer segment, start with identifying their
problems. At any given moment you should be able
to tell which problem you are trying to solve for your
customers. If you manage to identify and solve a
problem which is painful enough, people will be
ready to pay for the solution.
2. PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION

16. 3. Have you spoken to at least 3 of each
stakeholders about the problem?
PROBLEM SPACE SOLUTION SPACE

17. 3. PROBLEM INTERVIEWS
“I’ve learned more
by talking 2 minutes
with a customer,
than by 6 months of
market research”.

18. Go. And. Talk. With.
Customers. Now.
Seriously: this is the single most important
suggestion we want you to take away from this
presentation. Go. And. Talk. With. Customers. Now.
It’s important that you not only think that you have
found a problem, but that your customers validate
that they are indeed feeling the problem.
3. PROBLEM INTERVIEWS

19. Here are some reasons to speak to your customers
in such an early stage:
1. You never know if the problem is actually
there before it is confirmed.
2. Understand context of the problem (how
bad is it, why do they not solve it already, etc.)
3. You will have a list of people, who might
become your first clients.
We have created a checklist you can download to
help you set up problem validation interviews.
3. PROBLEM INTERVIEWS

20. 4. Now the question is, have you estimated if
the problem is worth solving?
PROBLEM SPACE SOLUTION SPACE

21. 4. PROBLEM SIZE ESTIMATION
Numb3rs are your
friends in this step.
Estimate the size of
the problem that you
are solving: it will help
you communicate the
seriousness of the
problem.

22. Companies have hard time finding talented
employees
On average corporates spend 20 hours to find
a suitable candidate. Taking into account the
salary of 20 €/hour and the fact that we hire
500 people every year, we spend 200,000 € on
just finding talented employees
Let’s compare two ways of explaining a problem:
Make sure you estimate the problem that you want to
solve. This will make your point more credible once you
communicate to managers/sponsors/investors.
4. PROBLEM SIZE ESTIMATION

23. 5. Have you come up with more than
one single idea to solve the problem?
PROBLEM SPACE SOLUTION SPACE

24. 5. IDEATION
So you know who your customer segment
is, you know their problems and you
probably already have an idea or two to
solve those problems.
Before you move on, stop for a minute and
try out a couple of ideation exercises to get
more ideas. Who knows, maybe you will
come up with even better ones?

25. 50 business models
to copy
What happens often
during ideation sessions
is that initial ideas are
improved even more.
Here on the left you can find a couple of exercises
to make brainstorming easier.
Brainstorm cards
75 slides & 120 brainstorm
cards based on 50 innovative
business model examples.
A collection of 52 cards to
help you brainstorm and come
up with new ideas.
5. IDEATION

26. 6. Do you know the existing
alternatives/competition?
PROBLEM SPACE SOLUTION SPACE

27. 6. COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE
Don’t reinvent apples!
Make sure to be up
to date on which
other alternatives are
available to solve the
same problem.
Photo by Raquel Martinez on Unsplash

28. For example, a lot of software companies don’t
understand that Excel is usually their alternative:
if their software is not solving at least one problem
better than Excel, it might be difficult to find adopters
for the solution.
Also, it makes sense to understand the competitive
landscape and scout what your competitors are doing
(what is working and what is not?).
Google might not be your best friend in finding
innovative concepts, so use producthunt, tracxn.com
and springwise.com instead.
6. COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE
Photo by Raquel Martinez on Unsplash

29. 7. Once you’ve decided which solution you’ll
pursue, can you explain it in 1 minute?
PROBLEM SPACE SOLUTION SPACE

30. 7. VALUE PROPOSITION
In order to
communicate
your idea clearly,
you should be
able to capture its
value proposition
in few effective
sentences.

31. Build your 1-minute pitch with this solid 3-sentence
template (source: Lean B2B).
Template
For (target customers)
who are dissatisfied
with (the current market
alternative). Our product
is a (new product
category) that provides
(key problem-solving
capability). Unlike (the
product alternative), our
product (describe the key
product features).
Example
Our product is for
marketing teams in small
retail chains that are
dissatisfied with newspaper
advertising. Our product
improves revenue through
greater reach. Unlike
newspaper advertising, our
products allows marketers
to reach highly targeted
customers fast.
7. VALUE PROPOSITION

32. 8. Have you made a tangible prototype,
which you could show to people?
PROBLEM SPACE SOLUTION SPACE

33. Once you know the problems of your customers, you
know those problems are large enough and you have a
solution with a clear value proposition, next step is to
build a prototype in order to run experiments.
Why? It will help you communicate your idea better
and gather first customer feedback. Must-read: The
Lean Startup, that will show you everything about
quick prototyping and testing.
There are plenty of different types of prototypes
that you could test with the customers, raging from
low- to high-fidelity.
8. PROTOTYPE

34. 1. Start on paper
Start with a simple storyboard/
customer journey map.
2. Go digital
Step further: design a live mockup.
3. Get real
Pretend to run the service (and
manually perform it).
8. PROTOTYPESome tips for your prototype

35. 9. You have a prototype. That’s so much better.
Have you showed it to the customers?
PROBLEM SPACE SOLUTION SPACE

36. 9. SOLUTION INTERVIEWS
Prototypes are made for a
sole reason: to be shared
and shown to customers in
order to gather feedback
and improve the product/
service. And since you
have a prototype, why not
show it?

37. Why, you may ask?
While showing prototypes and conducting
solution interviews, you will learn whether the
solution that you have in mind is something that
would be used by the customers. Customers
will provide you a lot of valuable insight into
how you could change the prototype to make
it better. Check out how our colleague Vincent
used lean startup to launch his own startup.
9. SOLUTION INTERVIEWS

38. 10. Time to show me the money!
Have you estimated the size of
the total addressable market?
PROBLEM SPACE SOLUTION SPACE

39. 10. ADDRESSABLE MARKET
“If you can show me the
business case,
it’s already too late.” — Bill
What he means is that for innovation projects
there are more assumptions in your business
than certainties. That’s the reason here at Board
of Innovation we use ballpark figures, a rough
numerical estimate which helps us to support our
arguments and show the potential value in the
project. No complicated business cases on Excel.

40. STEP 1 Build up a reasonable formula of how you
would calculate the addressable market size.
STEP 2 Fill in the formula with guesstimates.
Is it 10, 100, 1000, 10000 etc…?). The idea is to know
if the market is worth either 100k €, 1M € or 1B €.
Current number of cheap
and online trips worldwide
x price per day (similar to
cheap hotels)
x avg. time spend in hotel
x profit margin
ADDRESSABLE MARKET
EXPECTED REVENUE
expected
market share
MARKET %
x
SIZE MATTERS
10. ADDRESSABLE MARKET
PhotobyAzizAcharkikonUnsplash

41. EXTRA TIP
Do you know what you need from
the person you are pitching to?

42. Before you go to pitch your solution to the manager/
sponsor/investor, make sure that you know what you
need from them.
Is it money? Is it their time and support? Is it a
decision? Communicate what you need from them
and let them know what will be done/achieved with
the resources.
EXTRA TIP CALL TO ACTION
Photo by James Sutton on Unsplash

43. Congratulations! You’re ready to pitch
Photo by Anyika Onuora on Unsplash

44. Need support to take your ideas
further and help reach the market?
Your Lean Entrepreneur
is only one email away.
Photo by Jean-Frederic Fortier on Unsplash

45. Zygi Krupskis
Innovation Consultant
zygi.krupskis@boardofinnovation.com
Giorgio Orsucci
Innovation Researcher
giorgio.orsucci@boardofinnovation.com
Did we miss anything?
Reach out!
Board of Innovation makes corporates
innovate like startups, mixing proven
methods from Design Thinking and
Lean Startup.
www.boardofinnovation.com
Montana Mertens
Graphic Designer
montana.mertens@boardofinnovation.com
Feel free to tweak, fix,
remix any part of this work,
as long as it is for non-
commercial purposes.
Good karma on you if you
credit Board of Innovation.
say hi