manage my ideas

This tool will help you identify your competitive advantage in your market/idea.

1. What are the top 5 things that make your customers purchase a product?

2. On a scale from 1 to 10, where do you and your competitors rank on these values (try to be subjective)?

3. Evaluate the results and locate where you score the highest.

4. Create a statement that reflects this competitive advantage. Use this as a marketing tool to attract new customers.

Statement: My Company provides high quality goods at the lowest price and the most convenient locations. Why buy anywhere else?

Need to record and organize your ideas? Use ManageMyIdeas!

A SWOT analysis is a reality check after developing an idea. This tool examines the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats of your idea. A SWOT analysis can be performed in a very short amount of time, but often reveals the feasibility of your idea. A word of advice, be realistic in your analysis. Do not assume that you are the first to market with an idea. Do not assume that you have a perfect barrier to entry. Also, where possible try to answer the questions in complete sentences.

Strengths:

What advantages do you have?
What do you do better than anyone else?
What unique or lowest cost resources do you have access to?
What do people in your market see as your strengths?

Weaknesses:

What could you improve?
What should you avoid?
What are the people in your market likely to see as a weakness?

Opportunities:

What are the good opportunities facing you?
What are market trends that you are aware of?
How can recent changes in Technology help you?
How can recent changes in Government policy help you?
How can the “Strengths” listed above can prove to be opportunities?
How can the “Weaknesses” listed above can prove to be opportunities?

Threats:

What obstacles do you face?
What is your competitor doing?
How can recent changes in Technology hurt you?
How can recent changes in Government policy hurt you?
How can the “Strengths” listed above can prove to be threats?
How can the “Weaknesses” listed above can prove to be threats?

Possible Strengths and Weaknesses:
Resources: financial, intellectual, locational
Customer service
Efficiency
Competitive advantages
Infrastructure
Quality
Staff
Management
Price
Delivery time
Cost
Capacity
Strong relationships with key industry customers

Possible Opportunities and Threats:
Political/Legal
Economic condition
Expectations of stakeholders
Technology
Public expectations
Competitors and competitive actions

SWOT Matrix:

Need to record and organize your ideas? Use ManageMyIdeas!

Compiled with resources from Mindtools.

In 1979, Michael Porter developed a tool to determine the attractiveness of a market/idea*. This analysis should be performed during the conception stage of idea development. Within each market lie five forces: Supplier Bargaining Power, Buyer Bargaining Power, Competitive Rivalry, Threat of New Entrants, Threat of Substitution. There are several aspects to consider for each of the five forces. Where possible, please try to answer each question in complete sentences.

Supplier Bargaining Power - The power of suppliers to drive up the prices of your inputs.

-How many suppliers are in your market?
-How expensive is it to acquire a new supplier?
-What is the average supplier profit margin?
-What is the ratio of fixed costs to variable costs for suppliers?
-How important is volume to the supplier?
-How would you rate the supplier bargaining power? Weak (3 points), Moderate (2), Strong (1)

Buyer Bargaining Power - The power of your customers to drive down your prices.

-How many buyers are in your market?
-What is the size of the average market order? In quantity and dollar value.
-How often do the buyers go to the market for orders in a year?
-How expensive is it to switch suppliers?
-How easy is it for buyers to locate a new supplier?
-How expensive is it for the buyers to create your product for themselves?
-What other products are available that could substitute for yours?
-What is the price sensitivity of your buyers?
-How would you rate the buyer bargaining power? Weak (3 points), Moderate (2), Strong (1)

Competitive Rivalry - The strength of competition in the industry.

- How different are your products from other competitors?
- Number of competitors?
- How fast is the market growing?
- What is the ratio of total market production to total market capacity?
- How much does it cost to get out of the market?
- How important is brand in the market?
- What are the total advertising dollars being spent per year in the market?
-How would you rate the competitive rivalry? Weak (3 points), Moderate (2), Strong (1)

Threat of New Entrants - The ease with which new competitors can enter the market if they see that you are making good profits and then drive your prices down.

-What are the barriers to entry to the market?
-How important is brand in the market?
-What are the capital requirements to enter the market?
-How would a new entrant get access to distribution?
-How steap is the learning curve?
-How would competitors retaliate a new entrant?
-What government policies might affect the entrant?
- How would you rate the threat of new entrants? Weak (3 points), Moderate (2), Strong (1)

Threat of Substitution - The extent to which different products and services can be used in place of your own.

-What is the likelyhood that a buyer would substitute the market’s product for another?
-What is the price of the substitute product?
-How expensive would it be to switch to the substitute product?
-How different is the sbustitute product?
-How would you rate the threat of substitution? Weak (3 points), Moderate (2), Strong (1)

An overall rating of 15 to 12 would indicate an attractive market/idea.
An overall rating of 11 to 8 would indicate a neutral market/idea.
An overall rating of 7 to 5 would indicate an unattractive market/idea.

*Porter, Michael. (1979) “How competitive forces shape strategy”, Harvard Business Review, March/April 1979.

Need to record and organize your ideas? Use ManageMyIdeas!

Okay so you’ve got a notebook and dozens of 3×5 cards full of ideas. How do you organize these ideas so that you can review them and develop them? Technology has helped a lot in this area. You can now take your hand written notes and file them electronically. I asked several people how they organize their thoughts and ideas. Here are a few of their responses:

Ideas kept on hundreds of note cards and slips of paper become useless clutter. Years ago I started copying my ideas into a Microsoft Word document. Entries are organized by date, like a diary. This way I can search for an idea. I read through my notes looking for patterns of thought and lost gems. -Isabel

This may be time intensive on the front end, but I would suggest inputting them into your pc however you can and then using google desktop search when you need to locate a specific one. -Jennifer

The internet gives us the option to record our ideas on-line. Most of my ideas are things that I may never share with other people either out of fear of embarrassment or fear that they will steal my idea. This is why the ManageMyIdeas framework establishes all new ideas as private ideas. They can only be seen by the author. However, you might want to share certain ideas with other people or even share a few ideas publicly (for everyone to see and comment).

Take your ideas from your notebooks, 3×5 cards, napkins, word processor documents, emails, and compile them on ManageMyIdeas. It is easy to enter new ideas at any time. In addition you can share ideas with anyone, anywhere in the world (all you need is their email address). If you ever decide that you would like to do something else with the ideas you have stored on ManageMyIdeas, you can download your ideas (in XML format) to your computer.

Now that you have your ideas stored on ManageMyIdeas, you can assign “tags” or keywords to each idea to make it easy to find later. Just click on a tag and every idea with that tag will come up. Ever wonder where you put that napkin with that million dollar idea you had last year? Yeah, I use to lose my ideas too…that’s why ManageMyIdeas is a handy tool.

Get your ideas organized! Use ManageMyIdeas! It’s free!

Ideas come to us in different situations and at different times. The purpose of this entry is to give a few examples of ways to capture ideas before they are forgotten. Forget ideas? Yes, I don’t know about you, but I’ve had great ideas come to me in the shower that I’ve forgotten by the time I dry off. The following is a short list of ways to capture ideas:

Write ideas down

Keep a notepad by your bed, so that when you wake up in the morning you can write about your dreams. You may have dreamed about something that is impacting your daily life. By writing down your dreams, you are able to analyze trends that may help you find a solution to your problems. I like to carry 3×5 cards! I learned from this from the President of an organization I worked with. They are small enough that you can keep one in a pocket or purse to write down ideas at any time. Keep a journal. You can record the thoughts and ideas that you have had during the day. Many times the act of writing down your ideas spurs more ideas. This is the great benefit of writing down ideas.

Record yourself talking

While more expensive than a notepad, a small tape or digital recorder is a nice thing to have handy to capture ideas that may be flowing through your head. I’ve spoken with a few people who keep a recorder in their car, so that you can capture your thoughts while stuck in traffic.

Get creative

While I’m not much of an artist, I find that painting, drawing, song writing, and story writing can be great ways to capture ideas. Some things are more easily expressed through the arts. Many times our true feelings are able to come out through the arts.

Find an “idea friend”

You may think that you have a good idea, but your close friend/spouse is going to inform you that your idea has a few problems. Since this is not terribly good for the creative process, I recommend finding an “idea friend” - someone who can see the potential of your ideas and help you to brainstorm. What starts out as an okay idea can quickly become a great idea with an “idea friend.”

Draw a flowchart

I am a visual learner. I need to see what my idea looks like in the grand scheme of things, so I will typically create a flowchart. Now, I know that professional flow-charting has defined symbols and rules, but I’m talking about just throwing down some circles and lines. Another option would be to create a time line to visualize the timing of your idea.

With this list I’ve tried to throw out a couple of ways to capture your ideas more effectively. I would love to see your comments on this subject and learn some new ways to capture my ideas.

Several updates have taken place in this release. Below is an explanation of the major changes:

Public Ideas - Share your ideas with the world. As always, you can keep your ideas private; however, you now have the option to share thoughts, opinions, and ideas for everyone to see. Other users will be able to comment on your ideas, so that you can hear what they have to say. ManageMyIdeas is the first web application to offer such flexible options for idea sharing - keep them private, share them with selected associates, or publish them for the world to see.

Idea Summary - This new feature allows you to type a brief synopsis of your idea, so that when searching through your idea list you can remember the general concept behind each idea. If your idea is public, then the summary will serve to attract users to click on your idea and view it.

Idea Profile - Each idea now has its own idea profile page. Want to link to your idea from another website or your blog? Each idea profile has a unique and permanent URL. In addition, sharing and commenting are included on the idea profile. For returning users, you may notice that your idea formatting appears different (without any paragraph breaks). Just click the edit button and then hit save - your paragraph breaks will be corrected.

Toolbar - Download our toolbar for your browser (IE or Firefox). The toolbar includes a link for you to enter a new idea, so that whenever you have an idea come to your mind you can record it in ManageMyIdeas. The toolbar also has a feature for you to submit any website you are viewing to your favorite social bookmarks like Del.icio.us, Digg, Furl, and others. Also included is a dropdown tasklist. This post-it note type feature lets you list the things you need to get done. You can color code your tasks for different priorities.

Design - The design of the site is very important to us as it adds to the experience and provides the user interface. As such, we have made and will continue to make changes to the site design to improve usability.

Insert a URL - Now when you type a web address into your idea it will show up as a clickable link.

Brand - In an effort to have a more uniform and unique brand, we have changed the name of our service to ManageMyIdeas. ManageMyIdeas is a place to record and organize your ideas. Keep them private, share them with selected associates, or publish them for the world to see.

Feedback - Your opinions are important to us. Let us know what you think about the design and features of ManageMyIdeas.

Visit www.managemyideas.com

Ideas come to us at different times and in different situations. We created the Managemyideas toolbar is to assist you in capturing your ideas. Once you’ve downloaded the toolbar, it will appear in your web browser (Internet Explorer or Firefox) just under your address bar at the top. Just click on “Idea Tools” and you can link back to enter an idea in Managemyideas at any time. Click on the “Task List” and you can keep a to-do list of your daily tasks.

You can setup your taskbar to notify you when you receive a new email from your email provider. You can also, use the task bar to bookmark webpages to your favorite social bookmarking sites (del.icio.us, digg, Furl, Ma.gnolia, Newvine, Spurl, Reddit, Simpy, Stumbleupon, and Yahoo MyWeb).

To download the toolbar, just click here: Managemyideas Toolbar.

In the coming days, you will see some changes to the site (including this nice new blog).  We are working with the site design and we have added some new features.  Please be patient as we make these updates.  I will post additional information once we go live with the changes.

On February 19th, ManageMyIdeas was listed on EmilyChang.com, one of the premier directories for web applications and social software. In addition, Chris Gilmer from Web Worker Daily gave ManageMyIdeas its first public review on February 21st. We would like to thank Emily and Chris for their support. Due in large part to the publicity of these two sites, ManageMyIdeas is now being used in 73 countries and all 50 U.S. states.