Choosing The Business To Run

They may help you think of an idea you can develop. Amongst the three or four ideas they’ll propose, at least one may be ‘lucrative’

Buying an idea

It is possible to buy an idea: if and only if the person selling that idea assures you it is an exclusive one. If not, you will lose some money.

Obtaining a patent

It is for sure more expensive buying a patent, but it is safer. You will have to indulge yourself in much research, as well as consult the catalogue of the African Intellectual Property Organisation (AIPO) which requires a lot of patience.

The ‘clean’ opportunity

A golden opportunity or perhaps, a good deal can come pass your way. Amongst other things, have a ‘cool’ head, in order to detect such an opportunity:

• Developing a critical state of mind to analyse given commercial situations will be of great help.
• Be curious in order to detect opportunities.
• Be open-minded and learn how to accept different contributions, savoir-faire, or other practices, which could serve as spring boards for new commercial openings.

Transforming a simple job into an enterprise Swarming

For example: You are the manager of a maintenance service or per say a group of commercials. Having the desire to work on your own, you propose to your employer to leave, taking along your team. You can thus be compared to young bees that swarm out of their main hive, to form a new colony. Everybody gains in one way or the other:

• The employer: He lightens his burden without creating a decrease in the work load of his enterprise.
• The new enterprise: Maintaining good connections with the former employer will assure the enterprise a sure client.

Leaving without ideas, but clients
Leaving your employer, you decide to settle down and indulge into a similar activity. This is frequently seen in enterprises offering various services (advice, computer science…) If you were loved by clients when working for your employer, then rest assured they will follow you, out of trust and security. But be careful! You will be comfortable with your new enterprise if and only if your contract did allow you compete with the former employer.

Transforming ideas

Invest in a new market

Grab opportunities created by new trends, circumstances events… to offer new goods and services.

An Example: After they tarred the Douala-Yaoundé road, some entrepreneurs immediately thought of offering new transport services by offering the travellers more comfort and security in the buses.

Doing things faster

“A bright idea: What do you think of doing? Doing the same thing, or nearly the same thing, but faster?” For instance, enterprises offering message handling services. They were created due to the slowness of the Post Office. Other examples include, fast foods, etc

A new application

This is a method of creating an enterprise by making use of a technical know-how and a product already known, in another activity: for instance economic sector, or a different market.

Making use of socio-economic studies, and existing data

For political and economic reasons, the government frequently orders for socio-economic studies, to be done on each economic sector. In most cases, these studies evaluate the success of some products (per sector) in a market, by giving information on:
• Firstly, the size of the market.
• The degree of competition in the home or foreign market.
• The marketing perspectives in line with present or anticipated demands, in the market.
The Industrialisation Director Plan of Cameroon solved this problem.

A project can also be identified from existing data, viz:
o The customs statistics (statistics based on importation and exportation.)
o The investigations done on household consumption and expenditure (Budget-consumption investigations)
o The existing projects in the national industrial information network.
o The patent files kept by the AIPO

In line with the above, it is important to note that the AIPO controls some important data, hitherto unknown by the public. These data comprise unexploited and unprotected patents, patents under going exploitation, and disused unexploited patents.
Start your investigations from this last category, so you won’t have to pay royalties.

Defining and précising the idea

From the start, the idea remains more or less abstract, whatever its origins. Ask yourself the following questions to know which of the ideas you can easily exploit:
• Which products is the neighbourhood in need of?
• Which of the products can the people buy herein? Which of them are not available?
• Who sells these products in the region?
• What is the sale price, cost price, and the profit made?
• What can I do that can be useful to the activities proposed?
• Which enterprise will produce enough revenue for the operation to be durable and make much profit?