Need inspiration for a start-up idea? Just take a look around you

One of the reasons holding many acquaintances back from starting their own business was not the lack of funding or managerial skills, but the lack of an idea that could turn into a business success. Where a need exists, then an opportunity arises.

This has got to be the year to celebrate entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship; and not any kind of entrepreneurs, but entrepreneurs who started tech companies, or invented a tech program or software.

More and more business articles highlight the importance of teaching children computer programming and how the world is moving towards creating a generation of people who are makers instead of users. Business blogs also discuss the importance of content creation, and the shift of the business world towards that direction.

As I was conducting more research about this topic, it was not surprising to see that tech entrepreneurs are the most influential nowadays. In Forbes’ list of the World’s Most Powerful Entrepreneurs of 2013, tech company owners such as Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, and Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google, dominate the list alongside the likes of Facebook, Bloomberg, and LinkedIn’s founders.

In a world where businesses and countries still struggle to get their finances back into shape, tech companies have done exceptionally well. LinkedIn has surged more than 100 per cent in trading, while Twitter raised more than 70 per cent on the day of its recent IPO. Facebook, although not so popular with Emirati youth as the likes of Instagram and Twitter, has doubled in value over the past few months.

More and more people now prefer to start up businesses than to join traditional career paths. A CNN article states that 16 per cent of Stanford University’s business school graduates of 2011 in the United States chose to start their own companies after gradation, surpassing the school’s 12 per cent all-time high during the dot-com boom.

But even with the vast opportunities out there to be tapped by Emirati entrepreneurs, and the availability of numerous funding options such as Khalifa Fund, many potential entrepreneurs still await the “Eureka” moment to grasp on that innovative idea that would set them on a life-changing journey. In fact, one of the reasons holding many acquaintances back from starting their own business was not the lack of funding or managerial skills, but the lack of an idea that could turn into a business success.

However, do not let any of this halt you. Reading about the success stories of many entrepreneurs and successful business founders, I found that the following three sources could inspire great business ideas:

• You have a talent that can be turned into a business. Sit down and write down your skills and what you are passionate about in life. Perhaps you are a great writer and love to write fictional stories and your friends always loved listening to you tell your tales. Or maybe you are great at giving advice and a good public speaker. You can turn those two skills into a business by either becoming a freelance writer, or work on your debut novel, or make it a mission to become a certified life coach and turn that into an income-generator.

• You might suffer from a void in the market that you want to be filled. This has to be one of the most common inspirations for why many businesses were started. For fashion designers it could be that they never found something that suited their taste, and so they had to come up with their own line. Think about what frustrates you and those in your community, something that needs a product or service to fix it. It is amazing how one can turn a suffering into a source of income.

• You know a likeminded talented friend who could be a potential business partner. Although many people shy away from starting a business with a partner, there are many successes, as in the example of the founders of Google,or Twitter. In fact, being close and working with like-minded individuals could help to inspire new ideas. As they always say, two minds work better than one.

The business world, especially in the UAE, provides an array of opportunities for entrepreneurs to grasp. And as hard as it is sometimes to feel inspired, all one can do is look around. You might have the answer right under your nose all this time.

Manar Al Hinai is an award-winning Emirati writer and fashion designer. Follow her on Twitter @manar_alhinai