Meet a team of MIT students who invented the new technology
for harnessing energy from friction.
This technology promises an unprecedented efficiency ratio,
which makes the students very excited.
They even created a self-powering skateboard
to demonstrate what the technology can do.
Start by brainstorming, throw every idea at the wall,
including the crazy ones.
Don't worry about analyzing, and especially criticizing ideas.
At this point, keep your aperture wide open.
Identify potential industries for your idea.
In the case of the friction energy technology invented
by our students, potential industries
could be the automotive industry, sports,
electronics, healthcare, energy, and architecture,
to name a few.
Subdivide each industry into markets and market segments.
This gives specificity and structure to your process.
Let's take the automotive industry as an example.
This industry could be broken down
into three key markets, the market
for non-electric vehicles, hybrids, and electric vehicles.
And each of these markets contains market segments
such as sedans, sports cars, SUVs, trucks, RVs,
and motorcycles.
List the people who might benefit
from your idea in each industry, and ideally
in each market segment.
Focus first on end users, not customers.
Your end user is a person who uses your product,
your customer pays for it.
So far, our student entrepreneurs
identified two main categories of end users,
those in the pre-production stage such as design engineers
and assembly engineers, and those
in the post-production stage, such as maintenance engineers
and auto enthusiasts.
Once you have identified the end users,
describe the various tasks that they perform
and how they would use your product.
Your next task is to narrow the field.
List the top six to twelve market segments
that are most interesting.
As with many things in life, your limiting factor is time.
You should research and analyze prospective markets in depth.
But you do not have unlimited time to consider all options,
so six to twelve opportunities is more than enough.
After that, your next step is primary market research.
In other words, going and talk to some real people.
Theory doesn't produce data, action does.