Where do all the ideas come from?

A journalist asked me that question yesterday and we would like to share the answer with you here on our blog.

If we look at our current companies, they are all (except one) related to two ideas that arose approx 3 years ago.
"The eye-idea"
In 2005 I had a laser operation at Hamlet and haven’t needed glasses since. I was really please about my operation and told my good friend, Morten K, about my experience. He used lenses himself and soon decided to go for a similar operation. However, he went through the trouble of searching the net for information and found a clinic in Malmoe who perform the exact same operation – at half the price.

Morten travelled for 45 minutes and got the operation for 20.000 DKK. My transportation to Hamlet was only 30 minutes but in return I paid 40.000 DKK. We compared our experiences and concluded that quality and service was at least as good in Sweden. We wondered why no Danes knew of this possibility and Morten soon got the idea to make a company which should promote Swedish eye operations at the Danish market.

We made a referral contract with the Swedish eye clinic, and had taken our first steps. Today this company is called GodtSyn (www.godtsyn.dk) and this year we are sending 2.000 patients from Denmark, Norway and Sweden to our Swedish partner clinics.

18 months ago Morten and Carsten had the idea to expand the activities to Germany. The market was ideal and we made a joint venture with the Swedish eye clinic, which gave us control over the machinery. The new business was named CityLasik (www.citylasik.de) and has just been sold to the leading chain of eye clinics, Memira, which is owned by the Swedish investment group Investor AB.
"The lunch-idea"
In 2005 I worked as head of business development for the gastronomic entrepreneur Claus Meyer. One of his firms had a lunch kitchen which catered for 500 people Monday to Friday. The kitchen experienced deficits and I assumed the task of learning why. A high customer turnover proved to carry high sales expenditures and spells of excess capacity. I interviewed the customer who had left and asked them why. They made it clear that after a while they wanted variety and had decided to find a new cater for their lunch.

These findings inspired the idea for at network of many different lunch kitchens, between which the customers could swap. This should make it possible to retain the customers in the network AND satisfy their need for variety. Thinking led to doing and today Frokost.dk (www.frokost.dk) serves 6.000 meals every day produced in 20 kitchens which the customers alter between.

Six months ago we felt ready to investigate if the concept could be expanded to other cities. It was not easy, but we eventually settled for a suitable city: Oslo. Hence, we are currently testing if Lunsj.no will be the next company in Rainmaking.
And the future?
Besides Lunsj.no we are at present testing three different ideas. The first is an online purchasing network, which is an idea of Morten K (based on personal experiences once again). The second idea is a chain of fertility clinics, which Carsten felt like testing in the wake of the fast success with eye clinics. The last idea is consideration on extending CityLasik to other countries, if there is a market with favourable conditions for a chain of eye clinics.

In addition to this we would like to grabble with a high tech project, e.g. within CleanTech. Hence, we will not try to arrange visits at universities, research offices and laboratories. We will look for an idea, close to launch and with obvious advantages for the customer.

Generally speaking we will be more systematic in the process of idea development in the future. We will follow some clearly defined selection criteria and will evaluate many ideas every time we chose one. We believe that it is important to have a wide selection of ideas, so that only the best are selected.

What do you think about our approach to idea development? Please write us a comment.