The Art of Idea Generation: How to Come Up with Winning Product Ideas

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Have you ever noticed how certain conversational themes seem to recur in a given week? You might discuss a particular subject, only to find yourself having that same conversation with multiple people, separately.

That's been my experience lately. I've found myself repeatedly discussing the difference between two archetypes of professionals: "idea people" (visionaries) and those who implement those ideas (operators). This conversation has come up with a customer, team members, and someone in my network.

Many professionals I know love the thought of being an "idea person." They aspire to be the one who comes up with powerful new concepts. I suppose this is because we idolize visionaries like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk.

Interestingly, mentors I respect know me as a highly strategic—or visionary—person. This is probably why each of my three startups were first-movers in their categories. I've also used these skills to help companies create and launch products that have won me industry awards.

I'm less known as an operator, though my mentors assure me I perform well in that role too. It's just that I'm more suited to coming up with big ideas, taking them from 0 to 1, and then handing them off to an operator to scale. That's not to say I can't be an "operator"—I'm just stronger at the visionary aspect.

Today, I'm going to share some of the ways I come up with award-winning products.

How I come up with award-winning product ideas

Leverage your network

Product ideas don't have to come from the founder or product manager alone. In fact, some of the best product ideas come from talking to your network about the pain points they're experiencing. Chances are, if they're feeling it, it's widespread across your network.

Talk to customers

Should you build features exactly as customers suggest? No. Should you listen to what they say about their pain points? Absolutely—unless you want to go out of business.

Customer discovery is a powerful way of uncovering product ideas, as long as you're good at:

• Setting expectations with customers—i.e., we won't build everything you want, exactly the way you want it, in a timeframe you feel is reasonable.

• Asking the right questions—there's an art to customer discovery that will save you from asking leading questions that simply confirm what you already knew or wanted to believe.

• Saying no—sometimes the best course is a friendly but firm "no" to customer requests.

Customers aren't always skilled at articulating their real problems. For example, this week I spoke with a customer who had an issue with feature release cadences. That wasn't their real problem. The real issue was that they weren't well-informed about the feature release cadence. Had they been, they would have been better equipped to handle the volume.

Be sure to talk to customers, but take what they share with a degree of skepticism.

Analyze competitors

Watching what your competitors do is a good way to gain insight into what could be in demand from the market. Note that I said - could be.

Don’t always assume that your competitors do a better job than you do of staying on top of in demand features that customers will pay for. One competitor adding a feature could be a signal that they have found something powerful that will give them an edge. It’s also possible that they are simply testing for market demand. Now, when you see virtually early competitor adding a feature, that feature has now become table stakes and you need to serious consider adding the same enhancement.

Watch for emerging trends

I’ve had a few product ideas that you could call my calling card. The one that won me a national award in fintech was a first-of-its-kind venture debt program that was launched from inside the traditional financial institution I was a Chief Lending Officer at (before my product days). When we launched the program there was no one else offering venture debt, i.e. business loans to ideation-stage startups.

I came up with the idea after months of startups approaching me asking for traditional business loans. If you know anything about that space, like I do, business loans don’t make sense for 99% of startups. Why? Because obtaining a business loan is all proving your ability to pay the loan back and startups, especially ideation-stage ones, don’t have enough revenue to make the payments consistently.

So, I created the Line12 Fund, which used SBA loan guarantees to back business loans to early-stage, pre-revenue startups.

Why did it work? Startup culture was growing in popularity thanks to shows such as Shark Tank, universities and local municipalities in my area had been working to grow their startup ecosystem for some time, and the SBA loan guarantee reduced my bank’s risk.

Solve your own pain point

When I launched my first startup, GoGrabLunch, in 2010, I was solving my own pain point. GoGrabLunch connected like-minded professionals over coffee or lunch so they could build professional relationships that lead to referrals. If you're familiar with BNI, it took BNI's one-to-one meeting approach and scaled it. When I came up with the concept, I had built such a large network that I knew most of the people at every networking event. I wanted to meet the people I hadn't met but should meet. GoGrabLunch was born out of my own need for technology-enhanced ways to expand my network. Today, companies such as Bumble provide a similar service.

The art of product idea generation

The reality is that the best product ideas are generated from a combination of the above methods. It's not just about talking to customers. It's about talking to customers, analyzing the competition, and spotting emerging trends—all in unison. This is exactly why I call it an art form.

If you're curious about how much of an artist you are—that is, how well-positioned your product is—we provide free product assessments. Just click the button below to get started.

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