Will it Fly? How to Know if Your New Business Idea Has Wings ...Before You Take the Leap by Thomas K. McKnight

From the Publisher

Will your new business idea fly? Find out upfront, before you invest one dime! Will It Fly? introduces the first intuitive, practical tool for assessing and refining new business ideas. Fast, confidential, and reliable, it addresses 44 key elements of success, distilling experience from more than 200 business launches. Use it to fine-tune your idea... protect yourself and your investors... quickly evaluate multiple options... and dramatically improve your odds of success. Indispensable for every entrepreneur, investor, and advisor... even corporate planners and "intrapreneurs"!

Product Details

• Table of Contents
• Forewords & Introductions

Table of Contents

Forewords & Introductions

PREFACE

All Great Ideas Are Worth TheirWeight in Gold

This book introduces the Innovator's Scorecard. It is a highlyintuitive tool that allows a quick, snapshot evaluation of a businessidea. It is calculated to measure the worthiness of an idea beforecritical resources are tapped or engaged. By scoring your idea withthis index, you will identify its strengths and weaknesses. You willknow whether your business will fly, how to make it fly higher, andhow to add the weight necessary to drive it successfully into themarket so you win your share of the gold.

Over the past seven years, Columbia University, GeorgetownUniversity, the University of Maryland, the University of Denver, theUniversity of North Dakota, and The George Washington Universityhave periodically offered a course in entrepreneurship that requiresstudents to bring their business ideas to class. The essence of thecourse was also taught 16 times in Russia to senior executives ofvarious petroleum companies, all by means of a real-time languagetranslator and all under the aegis of Columbia University. This bookdescribes the distilled synthesis of a key element of those courses: acomprehensive, common-sense tool that can quickly assess the viabilityand feasibility of an idea at the very earliest moments of eachcourse. In each course, the students tried to launch their ideas intoreal live companies. That tool, which became known first as the"Launch Aperture" and later as the "Innovator's Scorecard," is thebasis of this book. We needed an up-front device that wouldinstantly align and screen the ideas for the students to manipulateduring the course. Did it work? Absolutely. Students werebringingin checks for tens of thousands of dollars from customers longbefore the business plans were written. In one case, the studentsclosed on $456 million for the support of their classroom project.

Anyone who uses the Innovator's Scorecard--from a first-timeat-bat owner to a repeat entrepreneur to a lawyer to a seasonedinvestor--can tell immediately whether an idea has the silhouetteof a success story. Using a prelaunch assessment tool is of vitalimportance--each year, there are heavy economic losses attributableto the failure of businesses. For example, Dr. Stephen C.Perry's study of the relationship between business planning (or lackthereof) and the failure of businesses in the United States turned upthis factoid: Each year, 17,000 businesses fail, and the aggregatelosses accrue to $40 billion.1 This is a staggering sum. By acting as a silent advisor at the very beginning of the thought process, theInnovator's Scorecard helps would-be entrepreneurs reasonthrough the facts that are known or that can be surmised up front.The entrepreneur can then predict the success or failure of his orher venture long before any serious money, savings, or resourcesare committed or spent. Will it Fly? is likely to be the best investmentany entrepreneur ever made.