A wish is a niche

(or how a bug list can help you invent the next hype)


The other day, someone posted a wish on Twitter along the lines of 'I wish teabags wouldn't drip when you try to throw them away'.

I answered with 'A wish is a niche'.

Think about it for a while.

The dripping teabag bugged someone enough to come up with a solution for it.

Does it ever happen to you that you wish something was different or worked better?

Let's do a little exercise here:

Create your Bug List (or problem bank) by listing all the things that:

• don’t work quite right, 
• bug or annoy you, 
• you notice people struggling with
• you struggle with
• you think need improvement

You add to this list by observing people around you, your customers, your competitors, your family.


Here is my today's bug list:

• Buttons coming off shirts
• Standard helpdesk response emails
• Unscrewing a screw when you have no screwdriver
• Time lost during driving
• I have the best ideas in my car - but I need to record them while driving: I wish I could just speak a text and a device would turn it into a text document - my blog posts would be written in no time! (something like it exists, but not available in Luxembourg, duh!)
• Remembering all your codes and passwords

Use your list of problems for idea generating using some of the creative techniques presented to you in my Sunday Creativity Tips (like random object).

Combine any new ideas with your bug list.

Connect the unlikely, the impossible, the unthinkable. See what comes out of it.

It might be a niche!