I spoke recently at an East of England Development Agency (EEDA) conference on the subject of entrepreneurship.
Do you need new ideas for entrepreneurship? Does it constitute a new idea if you open a corner shop in the conventional way but do so in a new location?
New ideas range from the one above to things like new systems of software. If the definition is sufficiently broad then entrepreneurship does require new ideas.
By switching around the letters of EEDA we can produce EDEA, which could mean: Effective Design of Entrepreneurial Action.
So you can have an idea and also an edea.
This means that it is not sufficient to just have an idea – you need to have a design of how that idea can be realised.
People who are creative tend to emphasise the newness of an idea but newness and novelty is considered a high risk to the person assessing the idea.
It would be better to emphasise the benefits of this new idea rather than the newness. So another new word is needed:
ADEA, meaning Asset Demonstration for Evaluation Acceptance.
It might be wise to point out the difficulties and obstacles that might be encountered on the way to realising the idea.
Which means we develop an ODEA: Obstacles and Difficulties Envisaged Ahead.
So we have the new words EDEA, ADEA and ODEA.
An odea might sometimes be part of an edea but there could be value in drawing out the odea before the edea is designed.
