How to Start Your Research with Attractive Mind Maps and Clever Business Models
You have an idea. How do you write it down? How do you know if it's workable?
We’ve all been through this. We have a new awesome idea and figured out the next best thing. This is big and will make big bucks!
Or maybe it’s just a personal project because we are passionate about electric vehicles.
Or maybe you want to learn a new skill.
How do you go about researching a new [business] idea?
Here is how I do it:
Mind maps:
I like to think about this kind of analogy: before any kind of military operation starts, it needs a base of operations. Well, this is what we will do, set base.
That particular base in my case is a mind map, and I like to use xmind for that. Sure, you can use a note, an excel file, or anything else, I just love the format of a mind map. It has a default structure that just works for me, I can easily move around topics and everything looks clean.
I tried using excel files and documents and I found out that I spend more time formatting the document than working on the actual ideas.
Note keeping tools such as Google Keep can provide good structure as well, but I just feel that mind maps work best for this purpose.
Business plan canvas:
If you are researching a business, then it’s a very good idea to think about a business plan. There are a lot of examples online on lean business plan canvas. I personally like the raw canvas from Heini Zachariassen because it has just the right stuff in it so you don’t lose too much time on a business plan.
Since we started with the mind map, we can easily include this business plan in our mind map.
Let’s also think about these topics in terms of questions:
Problem - Why? (ie: Why should anybody care?)
Solution - What? (ie: What can you do about the problem?)
Customers - Who? (ie: Who cares about this solution?)
Channels - Where? (ie: Where are the people with this problem?)
Unfair advantage - How? (ie: How am I different than the rest?)
Cost - How much out? (ie: How much does it cost me to offer value?)
Revenue - How much in? (ie: How much would people pay for this solution?)
The purpose of this simplified business plan model is to spend more time doing than thinking.
At the same time, it’s not productive to work without any structure, so, we can make compromises so that we get something worthwhile.
In the end, a bad plan executed well is better than a good plan executed poorly.
Some additional questions that you can think of at this point:
Is the product affordable for the target audience?
Is the problem pressing enough for people to pay for the solution?
Is your solution worth the money?
You might sometimes find out that there is a problem, a market for that but there is no money in that. In that case, you should consider a non-profit organization.
It’s essential to start small, test the market, and get feedback from your audience. But keep in mind a way to scale it. How can you grow?
Another important aspect is to know your audience (Who is your ideal customer?). For this purpose, we need to create a persona profile, but we will address this in an upcoming article.
Now that we have a base of operations and we know how to think about a business, let’s look at some case studies.
Case studies:
Case 1 - Talenter:
So, what do we have here?
This is one idea that I had at some point. What if talent recruiting could be made fun (and fast)?
There are so many obstacles when you want to get a job. You have to write your experience again even though you already have created a CV. You have to write a letter of intent, you need to present yourself, all these steps.
What if you could just click a button, and if the company representative finds you interesting, he can just reach out for additional details?
The whole point is to get faster to a real person.
When working with this kind of project, that gets really big, really fast, the structure is key. Brainstorming ideas like this is never structured, but by looking at this map, you would never think that.
This kind of mindmap has a default structure that makes every research look clean. You almost feel a sense of pride after 2 hours of working on it, even though you merely put down the ideas that you already had in your mind.
By the way, if you’re wondering how I created that wireframe and flow, here’s the link to wireflow.
Case 2 - Paid chat:
This is an idea that I had during this pandemic. Everything is online but what do you do when you want a fast answer to a question but you don’t want to wait for a StackOverflow question to be answered?
You need an expert that can solve your problem fast and you don’t want to go through all the loops that are in place on other platforms.
And I got this: start chatting and pay as you chat, simple and straightforward.
This idea was supposed to exist initially as an add-on that you can add to your personal website, blog, or newsletter and later scale it to a platform where you can find experts.
Case 3 - EV Motorcycle:
As you might have noticed, this particular case doesn’t have any business plan. That’s because I have no plan in turning this into a business. This is just a personal project that I researched some time ago.
You can also put notes in nodes (the yellow note icon). Here I used the notes for links of products or other specs that are necessary.
This case is here just to show that mind maps work pretty much everywhere.
I really like motorcycles and I was thinking that since I work on electric vehicles as my day job, I could create my own electric motorcycle. Just for bragging rights.
Practice:
Now that we’re at the end of this article, I really wanna hear how you do it. What would you change and why?
Do you have any old projects that you wrote into some format? Go look at those and see if you can improve the structure with what you learned here.
Do you have friends that you care for? Would this article help them? Share it now! We all know sharing is caring!