{"id":11126,"date":"2018-07-26T13:14:32","date_gmt":"2018-07-26T18:14:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thinkerventures.com\/article\/\/"},"modified":"2018-07-26T13:14:32","modified_gmt":"2018-07-26T18:14:32","slug":"avoid-idea-laundering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thinkerventures.com\/avoid-idea-laundering\/","title":{"rendered":"Avoid ‘idea laundering’ in new business ventures"},"content":{"rendered":"

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As a business-development company, we work with billion-dollar firms and startups. We’ve also been hosting the 1 Million Cups<\/a> networking group in Rockford, Illinois, for about 10 months. Every Wednesday at 9 a.m., we open the door for free coffee and to hear from a small-business owner and entrepreneur. That draws a variety of people, from other business owners to people who help businesses grow.<\/p>\n

It also draws more than a few dreamers. These are professionals who have ideas that they want to turn into a business.<\/p>\n

In these discussions, our first piece of advice<\/a> is to go pitch their idea to 50 complete strangers. Most people, when they come up with an idea, pitch it to friends and family. These are people who love and respect them and may not give the critical feedback they need.<\/p>\n

It also forces someone to approach 50 complete strangers. After all, you still have to sell a product or a service. If you don’t believe enough in your idea to sell it to strangers, why would somebody else?<\/p>\n

Even if you follow the advice, Katie Parrot of GrowthLab.com<\/a> warns of another problem. She calls it “idea laundering.” That’s the practice of “taking customer feedback and jamming it into your preconceived notions.”<\/p>\n

Parrot writes that there are two common traps that entrepreneurs fall into when doing market research.<\/p>\n

Skipping to a solution<\/h3>\n

Sometimes when an entrepreneur identifies a problem, they are so eager to come up with a business idea, they’ll skip steps to get to a solution. They will ignore whether the solution has true market potential.<\/p>\n

Hammer-nail syndrome<\/h3>\n

Often, an entrepreneur will come up with a potential solution and then mentally fit all feedback they receive into validation of that solution. They’ll ignore feedback that may indicate that there’s a better solution.<\/p>\n

The syndrome is named for psychologist Abraham Maslow’s famous saying: “I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.”<\/p>\n

So change your thinking<\/h3>\n

Once you’ve realized that you’ve ignoring what people actually are saying versus what you want them to say, you have some options to correctly validate your idea:<\/p>\n