Most entrepreneurial start-up don’t come from some magical “ah ha!” moment of inspiration. They come from our daily lives.
The best ideas from business come from our work and training, our knowledge and educational background, and from our personal experiences.
BNET has an inspirational story of an entrepreneurial idea that came from personal experiences. It is the story of Kirby Best, who happens to be right here in Nashville:
“My wife was diagnosed with breast cancer 10 years ago. She’s fine now, but we had four little boys at the time and her illness was a blow to all of us. The chemotherapy triggered early menopause, and one of the side effects is hot flashes or night sweats. You perspire heavily, and the bedding gets very wet. And once you’re wet, and the flash passes, you get that awful clammy, cold feeling.
“I had experimented with some of the early wicking material, and remembered I had some clothes made of this material from the 1980s. I asked my wife to just try sleeping in this material. I said it would wick away the moisture and keep her dry. All of a sudden she could sleep at night. It transformed our life.”
(Thanks to Bill Hobbs for passing this along).
Alot of good ideas come from borrowing brilliance (as seen in this case). Most ideas have already been thought of. So to be successful we must recycle these ideas in a way that hits new markets or elaborate on the features to become more innovative. The trick here i think is to hide your sources. Take information from different business not directly in competition with a certain product. Einstein was in fact correct when he stated “The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.”