Selling an idea

[Astaroth]

Ok, never started a thread and now I have 4 to my name :D

Have had an idea (or at least the missus has) and I think there is mileage in it.

Thinking about it there are two routes to market but a little preliminory research has shown that they would require more significant IT development than I would like to be involved in.

A second potential avenue I guess is to "sell" the idea to a bigger player. As far as I can see there would be a number of potential different types of organisations who could easily run with the idea and impliment it as a complimentary service to their existing offerings.

My concern is that I know that my employers receive many such approaches each year and generally just have a laugh at the persons idea or their wanted monies and we have never officially taken on any of the suggestions.

Is there any potential in selling an idea? What would be the correct way to go about these things?

[IMEX Sourcing Services]

Hi Astorath,

What stage of development is your idea in? Is it just an idea in your mind, and in brief, or do you have a complete business plan with research to support it?

I think if you plan to approach organisations of any significant value, it would be best to have a detailed business plan, with research to support your ideas. Once you have done that, you can start sharing your plan with potential investors, such as angel investors, venture capitalists, or other organisations who you think might be interested in your idea.

Please make sure that you make then sign an NDA (Non Disclosure Agreement) before you give them too many details about the idea.

Wish you GOod Luck with your idea.

Ash

[jklondon]

would agree with Ash, do some work get a business plan together - the idea may look good but could perhaps not be financialy viable after you have done the numbers..

[Astaroth]

Many thanks for both of your responses.

Certainly at this point the idea is in its infancy and limited to a back of a fag packet type figures. As far as I see there are 2 implimentation solutions, one for SMEs (and possibly closer to the S than the M depending on your definitions) - this I could easily get done at minimal outlay and would only need a very small percentage of the target market to subscribe to turn a profit.

The second solution would be aimed at larger organisations and requires much more thinking at this stage. The IT implications if I was to run with it would be well beyond the scope of my knowledge and would require long term support. Given that I dont want to give up my day job this part looks like it is out of my scope.

Having done a little looking arround on the net there are a number of companies that make moduler software for the particular market and it would be a simple thing for them to make a new module for their own system based on our idea. Alternatively there are a number of online companies offering consolidation services and the idea again could be an extention to this - possibly more difficult in terms of creation but a larger number of existing customers for them to cross sell to.

My "concern" is that the SME solution may not be totally viable without the "volume of data" from the larger companies.... or at least the value add of the new idea aspect will not be adding as much value - hence the idea of simply selling a business case/idea