'Business idea' evaluation; presenting the Structural Position Analysis (SPA) technique

'The IKEA vision is to create a better everyday life for the many people. We make this possible by offering a wide range of well-designed, functional home furnishing products at prices so low that as many people as possible will be able to afford them.'; (http://franchisor.ikea.com/, 2006-07-10) Given the undeniable success of the IKEA business concept, one may well argue that the above 'business idea' is a good one. Short of considering post-facto success like growth or some measurement of profitability, we however have preciously few assessment-techniques for evaluating 'business ideas';. There are, of course, some techniques, like scrutinizing whether the 'business idea' matches the customer's needs, the company's resources and the intended products. Thus, analyzing the consistency of the 'business idea'. Likewise, it is possible to evaluate to what extent customers, resources and products are addressed in the 'business idea'. Unfortunately, a coherent 'business idea' is not automatically a good one, and even a non-coherent idea is not automatically a bad one. It is however not so easy to say why it is so. If this paper will not remedy that situation, it will at least present and demonstrate a new technique for business idea analysis and development. That is the Structural Position Analysis (SPA) technique. 'Principal Topic:' The notion or concept of the 'business idea'; is well spread on corporate web sites and, furthermore, also present in much graduate and undergraduate teaching. Despite this, there are few attempts at developing robust and generally valid methods and techniques for analysis and evaluation of business ideas. Rather, the centre of attention in business-proposal-assessment tends instead to be the entrepreneur. Thus, evaluating the personal requisites of individuals rather than the ideas as such. It is, for instance, common and often stated textbook knowledge that, for instance, an A (or first class) entrepreneur with a B (or second class) idea is considered as more preferable for banks and other investors than the B entrepreneur with an A idea. This is likely to be due at least partly to the lack of methods and techniques for evaluating. Instead the successful idea becomes something of an extraordinary insight, in line with the character of entrepreneurial innovations as argued already by Schumpeter. Thus, the successful 'business idea' brings about something novel or never before seen. Since this in itself implies that there at best are few points of reference for an evaluation, the face value or potential successfulness of the idea is difficult to assess beforehand. The SPA technique for 'business idea' evaluation, proposed in this paper addresses this problem.