If no one is doing what you're doing, it's probably not because no one thought of it before. There are two reasons an idea might never have been developed into a product before:
1.) Seems too hard
2.) Seems unwanted
Underlying these perceptions might well be the reality that the idea is too hard, unwanted, or both, but the perception is what matters.
So, if you're doing something new, most people will think it's either too hard, unwanted, or both. (Otherwise, lots of people would be doing it.) They might be right, but their opinions are not meaningful data points.
If you want to innovate, don't waste your time arguing.
I'm not quite sure how to express this, but it seems like the smartest people tend to work on the most seemingly trivial problems. You'd think that geniuses would gravitate toward really hard problems, but a lot of the Nobel/MacArthur winners are more like Karl Von Frisch who discovered bees doing the waggle dance. Or Darwin who spent eight years studying barnacles.
http://worldandi.misto.cz/_MAIL_/feynman.html
"Feynman finally broke the depression cycle in a typically Feynmanesque way. He challenged himself to describe in equations the wobbling movement of a spinning plate being tossed in the air by a student in a Cornell cafeteria. After much effort, he was able to show that, consistent with his observations, for a small degree of wobble, a one-to-two ratio between the wobble and spin was indeed valid. When Feynman excitedly described his results to Bethe, the other scientist listened with interest but wanted to know their practical value.
Feynman had to admit that they had no practical value. He had solved the problem because he had fun doing it. This recognition was an epiphany for Feynman. He decided that from then on, he was going to do physics just for the fun of it. Energised by his decision, he went back to problems in quantum electrodynamics that he had started working on while still at Princeton-the work that eventually brought him the Nobel Prize. Ironically, he found that the spinning-plate movement he had studied just for fun also had application to the electron-spin problem."
To clarify, what I am getting at is that smart people are able to see important problems in areas where others see no promise. Not that smart people are wasting their talents or solving the wrong kinds of problems. :-)
The parallel with scientific research strikes me. To find gems one has to look into spaces left in the shadow by people.
I often was surprised to see that better algorithm where obtained by counter intuitive approaches (i.e. BM string search algorithm, radix sort,...). This is now a heuristic I use in my activity.
In addition to looking into ideas that are often discarded, Paul also reminds us that the testing cost (time, complexity, finance) should be minimal. The rational is not to be economical, but to maximize the number of tests and experiences one can do with the limite resource we have.
Looking into the bad idea space increases the probability to find a good one and picking cheap ideas to test allows to increase n. This maximizes the probability of success.
In case you're interested, there is a method called ASIT (for "Advanced Systematic Inventive Thinking") to help solve problems in creative ways, by forcing us to look where we wouldn't look otherwise (because of cognitive fixation). One of its main assumption is that creative solutions are often to be found near the obvious solutions, and that they are only different in small aspects. Moreover, it tries to turn the origin of a problem into a part of its solution!
The really, really sad thing is that it's a quite formal, very thoughtful, "no bullshit" method (unlike brainstorming) but paradoxically the guys who promote it make IMHO the terrible mistake of selling as if it was some kind of "snake oil" (look at the main website, http://www.start2think.com ) I'm pretty sure it turns genuinely interested people away; myself, I discovered it through a professional training session and wanted to know more but I would never have trusted those websites otherwise.
If you can find the ASIT book by Roni Horowitz (I have the self-published french translation, but I guess the original english one is available somewhere), and can read past the first few pages of grand promises, you'll probably learn very interesting stuff about creativity.
re find faster and cheaper ways of testing them: i test using myself, my friends and my family. If i don't use what i've implemented it may not be a good idea.
That's a good strategy. Even if the idea were good, if you and the people around you aren't excited about it, then it will be difficult to execute well.
I dunno - what if your friends and family are laggards on the technology curve? My sister is probably the last person under 25 without a Facebook account. My parents still don't have cable TV, let alone IPods and videophones. They barely know how to turn on a computer. When I tell them what I'm doing, they say "Who has time to play games on the computer, let alone create them?"
If it weren't for my cofounder's constant assurances that yes, people want this (well, and that his girlfriend's roommates tried to sign up for our site even though we're not open yet), I probably would've given up a while ago. Which I guess underscores the importance of having a cofounder from a different background as yourself. It's easy to get stuck in a narrow perspective if the people you're close to all share it.
Yes, I should have said "you OR the people around you". Someone needs to be excited, but they certainly aren't all going to be (most will think it's a bad idea). This is also a good reason to spend more time with the "right" people (people who get excited about new ideas instead of shooting them down).
I've an idea that (I believe) would be useful to people in their day to day real-life. If I get to the stage where I need to attract those people as users I was thinking of targetting a small number of them that are geographically local; I know where they hang out. Just with old fashioned posters on notice boards, that kind of thing. They'll be a small set of guinea pigs to experiment on. As luck would have it, they're typically in touch with others of their kind so if they like the site I think they'll voluntarily tells others.
My poorly made point is that old fashioned advertising may be an initial way to attract users if they're targetable.
If no one is doing what you're doing, it's probably not because no one thought of it before. There are two reasons an idea might never have been developed into a product before:
1.) Seems too hard 2.) Seems unwanted
Underlying these perceptions might well be the reality that the idea is too hard, unwanted, or both, but the perception is what matters.
So, if you're doing something new, most people will think it's either too hard, unwanted, or both. (Otherwise, lots of people would be doing it.) They might be right, but their opinions are not meaningful data points.
If you want to innovate, don't waste your time arguing.