A playbook for Generating Business Ideas

About the Author
Mike Fishbein is an entrepreneur in New York City, author of multiple books on
entrepreneurship, and has advised both startups and Fortune 500 companies on
new business innovation.
Mike is the Founder of
stpcollege.com
, an education technology company in
New York City. With over 2,000 enrolled students, stpcollege.com's online
courses help entrepreneurs start and grow their companies.
Prior to stpcollege.com, Mike was a founding team member of Casual Corp, a
venture studio and corporate innovation firm founded by an accomplished serial
entrepreneur. While at Casual Corp, Mike served as a lead product manager in
incubating and launching three new consumer technology products. In addition,
Mike advised some of the world's largest companies on new product innovation.
Mike's expertise lies in customer development, Lean product strategy, and
customer acquisition. His writings on startup marketing and strategy have been
published in The Huffington Post, Entrepreneur, and more.
Mike has been starting companies since he was a teenager, and serves as a

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resource and advisor to startups in New York City and abroad. You can learn
more about Mike via his personal blog,
mfishbein.com
or on
Twitter
.
Mike is the author of
several
other
books
, including: 1. “
Customer
Development
for
Entrepreneurs: How
to
Test
Startup
Ideas
and
Build
Products
People
Love
”
2. “
Business
Networking: How
to
Build
an
Awesome
Professional
Network
”
3. “
Growth
Hacking
with
Content
Marketing: How
to
Increase
Website
Traffic
”
4. “
The
Ultimate
Guide
to
Blogging: How
to
Start
a
Blog, Promote
Your
Blog,
and
Make
Money
Blogging
”

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Section 1: Introduction to Starting a
Business
Before we can understand how to get business ideas, we must first understand
what a business idea is, and what a business is. Similarly, an architect must
understand the purpose of a building before he or she can design it.
The first section of this book defines what a business is, what makes a good
business idea, the reasons why you might want to start a business, and more.
This sections explains that different businesses have different characteristics and
different entrepreneurs have different goals and abilities.
After understanding the concepts discussed in this section, the methodologies for
generating business ideas discussed in section two will be more intuitive. You
will also be better-equipped to qualify your ideas and consider which ideas you
want to pursue.

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Chapter 1: What is a Business?

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