Where to find business ideas that can launch your entrepreneurial career

Many students are interested in entrepreneurship and starting their own business, with a Santander survey suggesting that 27 per cent plan on starting a business while at university. In view of this, there is now lots of support for these ambitions in universities, ranging from skill-building activities and practical help from mentors to incubators and accelerators. At university, you can also meet potential co-founders. However, all businesses begin with an idea, so how do you spot business opportunities and why are some people better at this than others?

Most business students have good employment prospects, making forays into entrepreneurship are mostly “opportunity centred,” which means that founding a business is based on seeing a great idea deemed too good to ignore, rather than “necessity driven” entrepreneurship, which commonly comes about due to poor employment prospects and the need to earn money.

Entrepreneurial alertness and finding ideas

Research suggests that people who are good at opportunity spotting are good at “joining the dots”; namely, finding links between problems, people, new technology, changes in government policy and demographic and attitude changes in ways that go beyond the obvious, identifying new opportunities or solutions to problems. Simply being observant in everyday life can help increase your chances of spotting an important connection. This ability, often described as “entrepreneurial alertness” is the cognitive capability of those recognising entrepreneurial opportunities and differentiates entrepreneurs from non-entrepreneurs. Individuals who have a high entrepreneurial alertness would be expected to personality traits that include high intelligence, a university business education, creativity, a large social network, self-efficacy and local, industry, market and technical knowledge, as well as a passion for entrepreneurship.

Opportunities generally come from problems to be solved, but the solution is not always simply a functional product or service. It can also be something that is more convenient or cheaper than existing solutions or that brings emotional fulfilment – ie making someone feel good.

Industry experience

Opportunities can come to you in a number of ways. Firstly, ideas can come from the subject you are studying, a survey by the National Centre for University and Business in 2022 found that 58 per cent of graduate entrepreneurs started a business based on their field of study. Larry Page and Sergey Brin famously founded Google while studying how documents on the web could be linked together in a PhD project, for example. The same logic also applies to business students. Philip Robinson started the Pentone Family, a beverages firm, after his experience of studying international trade in Italy as part of an Erasmus programme.

Students at MBA and equivalent levels are likely to have many years of industry experience and this deep industry knowledge can help identify opportunities in a similar way. Indeed, it’s very common for graduates to work in their chosen industry for several years before leaving to start their own business, having identified an opportunity through their extensive knowledge of the industry and market.

Personal observation and experience

Secondly, experiencing or observing a problem for yourself and saying “there must be a better way than this” is something we all experience during our lives. Finding customers “pain points” is a common way to identify an opportunity and indeed, understanding where people will be prepared to pay for a better solution. Harry Panter started Housr, an app for matching students with landlords, after difficulties experienced in the private rental market when trying to find student accommodation in Manchester, for example. Elsewhere, entrepreneurship master’s student Rijul Shukla started Spice Story observed that there was a gap for plant-based Indian ready meals in the UK, having personally found the existing products on the market to be bland and unexciting. As well as experiencing things for yourself, you can also use published research or reports, possibly from your industry, as a focus to identify problems, with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals offering one good example. The added incentive here is that there is often extra support and funding for business ideas that address serious world issues, such as clean energy, food security and inequality.   

Hobbies and interests

Thirdly, a hobby or interest can be a source of inspiration for business ideas, for example Shindigger Brewery was started by two business students who brewed beer for a hobby while undergraduates. The business took off after graduation and now brews more than 1.5 million pints of beer per year. A recent Santander survey suggests that around 25 per cent of all student businesses are based on arts and crafts, often being scaled up from students’ hobbies.

Bringing existing ideas to new contexts

Translating an idea successful elsewhere to a new context is also a good way to identify an opportunity. Yo! Sushi founder and former Dragons Den judge Simon Woodroffe enjoyed the conveyor belt sushi bar concept while travelling in Japan and set up the company in the belief that the idea might work in the UK. For this method, being in a diverse environment in terms of people and places can be extremely helpful. International students, in particular, often bring ideas from their home country to their adopted country. For example, Little Inca, is a quinoa plant-based baby food company developed through founder MBA student Erick Vera Bazan’s connections to his home country of Chile and neighbouring Peru. Technology can also be translated into new context and permeate between industries. Most famously, space technology that was initially developed by NASA has gone on to be used in very different industries, such healthcare, fishing and kitchenware, where it has very different uses to those initially envisaged.

Further sources of ideas

Finally, you can look at data for industry and market trends using universities’ extensive subscriptions to trade journals and databases to identify trends which might show you a growing market. Anita Roddick set up Bodyshop when she saw that a rising awareness and number of people standing against animal testing for cosmetics. In many countries, you can also use freely available government statistics to help you define demographic trends that help identify opportunities. For example, understanding the precise extent of a country’s expanding elderly population can present opportunities for addressing issues affecting elderly people.

Broadening your horizons

Lastly, how can we get better at finding viable business opportunities? Your ideation can be improved using visuals, note-taking and mind mapping, as well as by interacting with a wider variety of people and pushing yourself outside your comfort zone. A diverse range of friends and interests, alongside getting involved in interdisciplinary studies can really open your eyes to different viewpoints and lived experiences that breed ideas. The good news is that research has shown that one of the most important factors in finding successful opportunities is simply to be actively looking – so if you are looking for them, you have a greater chance of finding an opportunity that can bring you success.