Is your idea worth pursuing?

Market research and validation is a crucial part of venture creation. Testing your preconceived ideas and concepts is invaluable in building a viable enterprise and will save you time, money and help you succeed faster.

Alexander Osterwalder is famous for creating the business model canvas. He’s also done a lot of thinking around testing business ideas. If you’re wanting to do a deep dive, his book Testing Business Ideas is available from the University of Auckland Library.

Eric Ries is the author of the Lean Start-up – a book we highly recommend. His book is available from the University of Auckland Library.

Steve Blank is a rock star of entrepreneurship education. He’s had a number of successful start-ups and now teaches entrepreneurship at Stanford. Here’s a video about customer discovery (finding out who your customers are) from his Launchpad series. Watch one video, or watch them all – you’ll learn a ton. Watch the video, Customer Discovery.

Professor Rob Adams wrote the book If You Build It, Will They Come? sharing three simple steps to test and validate any market opportunity. The book is available from the University of Auckland Library. There is a summary of the book in the Slideshare presentation Market Validation.

Rob talking about market validation.