3 Ways to Invent a New Product or Service

Yesterday I was talking with 12 students in an Entrepreneurship class at Wayne College.  Most the students are planning to launch a new product or service and many want to own their own business.  II was a guest speaker asked to talk about inexpensive but effective ways for marketing their products, services and businesses.

While we were talking it occured to me that there are at least 3 ways to invent a new product or service. 

• Combine two popular ideas – If one idea works, maybe improving it with another makes it twice as good. 
• Solve a Problem. Don’t create a product and then mass produce it.  Find out if there is a problem it solves.
• Ask your target market what they think: If you ask the people who will be buying it in the future, what their opinion is, you may save years and hundreds of thousands of dollars.  Don’t rely on the opinions of friends and family.

My area of expertise is marketing it.  One of the ways we talked about marketing was of course on the internet.  I suggested that they learn to create their own website using WordPress software.  If they set a static page to the main page of their blog, all of the suddent it’s not a blog with static website pages, but a website that has a blog on it.  Clever eh?

I predict as the economy shifts that we will see more and more entrepreneurs launching new businesses.  Are you starting a new product or adding a new service?