Bringing your ideas to the web. Now, that’s what I call a challenge… (part I of 4)

Since the early boom of the World Wide Web phenomenon, people all around the globe have brought their ideas online. A couple of examples come to mind… Google, Amazon, just to name a few… Then again, there are some others that did not have the same luck (CNET’s Top 10 dot.com flops). Nevertheless, there are thousands, if not millions of us who, every year, come up with what we think will be “the next big thing” and most of us – me included – eventually do not act upon it, leaving our cyber dreams on a simple diagram or a couple of lines written on a text document lost somewhere in one of our many hard drives…

With this in mind, how can we bring our ideas to the web and not fail miserably? Honestly, I have no idea. But I do know a couple of things that can be used as guidelines in order to help you on your way to web stardom (hopefully). Many of you will probably say that they already know what I am about to describe. Many of you probably do plan accordingly and keep everything neatly organized. But do you do enough? You can plan things but how about when things don’t go as planned?

So here it is. My simple guidelines to dot.com bliss. Enjoy.

1. Planning is everything (almost).

First of all, you have to have an idea. Well? Do you? Even if you have unlimited resources if you don’t have a well formed idea you won’t be able to do anything from it. Winging it doesn’t really cut it. So, put you thinking hat on and brainstorm it. And then brainstorm it again. And put everything on paper. Yes, your heard me. On paper (handwriting facilitates the thinking process).

After you have a well formed idea, confront it. Search for possible rivals. Search for patents (if your thinking of a product). Search for anything and everything that could either be equal or could be antagonistic. Fill your “enemy” shoes. Fill you “client” shoes. And the, brainstorm a bit more, if you have to. Luckily thinking is a non taxable process (yet).

2. Ok, now I do know what I want. Should I plan it?

Of course you should. The issue here is how to plane it properly. After your idea is formed you need to put it in motion.

Start by planning you goals. What do you want to achieve with this idea of your? Money, fast? Ok… But that’s now enough to make it happen. Will you be offering a service? A product? Will you be selling it? Are you planning to do it exclusively online or there will be a physical store, product, venue? Does it entail storing volumes – and I’m not talking data only. Will you need logistics? Will you need distribution? Will you need people to help you achieve all of this? There’s a lot to ponder, right? And you bet that, after you think you got it all, there will be still something left out. Murphy’s law applies every single time.

3. Re-planning. Rethink it. Reload your brain.

So, by now you should have a ton of paper with thoughts, ideas, sketches, diagrams and every bit of scribble you could think of for that past days, weeks or even months. What’s next? Putting it all together. Review every bit of paper. Reorganize it. Try to find new angles for what you already though. Think outside the box. Go back in. And out again. Pretend you are someone else. A client, a sponsor. Pretend you are a kid, an elder. Pretend you area everyone you know. How would they respond to your ideia?

At this stage you can try a technique often used by project managers. I like to call it rubberducking – as it was told to me by my PM trainer. “Rubberducking you say?… Hum…” Yeah, I know. Sounds silly, doesn’t it? Moving forward, rubberducking consists in using someone (anyone) or, if there is no other choice, a rubber duck – hence the name – to present your ideias as if they were your intended target. By doing that you often find out all by your self most of the problems in your presentation. Could be the idea by it self, could be the way you present it. Anyway, it is a great exercise for you to engage with and rethink it all, again.

At the same time you can start putting together your basic communication layout. More on this later on…

Coming up next:

Don’t try to do it all by yourself. You can’t do it!
Don’t believe your eyes. Test and test again.
Even if I manage to do something good, how will the world know about it?