How to Take Your Big Idea to the Next Level With These Five Simple Steps

There's never been a better time to share those ideas 💡

This article is presented in partnership with Samsung Solve for Tomorrow.

Have you ever had an idea so big you felt like it could change the world? Those once-in-a-lifetime thoughts which make you stop and think “hey, this could work.”

As inspiring as those thoughts are, it’s sometimes harder than it seems to turn them into real life solutions.

So if you’re looking for some inspo, we recently partnered with Samsung to run Solve for Tomorrow workshops in Sydney to help turn game-changing ideas into real-life ventures.

Based on Samsung’s Design Thinking process, here are five steps to help you take your idea to the next level.

Empathise.

While we might have that initial thought that sparks our desire to solve a problem, we may not have the real-life experience. Empathy is all about starting the thinking process by learning about the problem we’re trying to solve and the people it impacts.

So strap on your experimental cap because this first step involves researching, interviewing people, observing the problem and immersing yourself in others’ lived experiences.

Define.

Once you’ve developed the base of your idea you can look into the future and at the possibility of your idea solving real-life problems.

If it feels messy and all over the place, congratulations! You’re doing it right.

The best thing you can do is hone in on the things you’ve learned that feel the most important.

One way of defining your thoughts is by brainstorming “how we might” questions. Ask yourself:

• How might we achieve…
• How might we help…
• How might we allow…

That way we can picture our idea and how it might solve a problem for a community.

Ideate.

Strap in because we’re moving into the concrete part of our five steps 🙌

The ideate step can be broken down into two parts: creative mode and analytical mode.

Creative mode.

During creative mode, you could take your “how we might” questions and brainstorm answers and solutions. This is meant to feel wild, big and slightly crazy. Don’t limit yourself, every idea is a good idea.

Analytical mode.

Analytical mode is where you start cutting down all the ideas that might not suit the community you’re trying to help. Keep the people you’re trying to help in mind and ask yourself: which of the solutions you brainstormed in creative mode solves their problem best?

Prototype.

No, we don’t mean you need to build an actual prototype.

If someone were to ask you core questions to do with your idea, your ‘prototype’ would need to answer those questions and explain how it serves a certain purpose.

Depending on your idea: a prototype might involve:

• Telling stories: explaining how your concept will come to life in a real-life situation.
• Paper prototypes: creating a sketch to portray your idea more visibly.
• Digital prototype: design a simple screen to showcase the idea of how an app or site could look like.
• Physical prototype: maybe your idea does involve building something. In that case you would want to create a smaller version of that to showcase how the product might feel or test in the real world.

Test.

We’re at the last step 👑

It’s time to test your prototype. You’ll want to find out if it meets the needs of the people you’re trying to help. Ask them for feedback and take it seriously.

Don’t expect to get things right on the first go. Developing your big idea is all about trial and error. And some of the best big ideas in business started with mostly errors.

Based on the feedback you receive, you can take that and improve your prototype so that it works even better.

If working on your idea and taking it to the next level has motivated you to do more, then you can submit your idea to Samsung’s Solve for Tomorrow competition.

If you are a young Aussie aged 14 to 24 with a big idea, you can submit your project and go into the running for the grand prize of $10,000 and the opportunity to take your idea to the next level.

Learn more and get stuck in here.