Let ’ s focus on solutions that improve the way your industry is currently doing things. The question you want to ask is “ How can we do this thing in a better, more efficient way?”

However, the most important questions you need to ask are “ What do people want? How can we give it to them more effi ciently and effectively for us both? ”

Always think of the end result and ultimate goal. Give people what they want, when they want it, how they want it, where they want it, in the easiest, fastest, and most effortless ways. Encyclopedias could be written on this statement.

Don ’ t think of offering people what they want in terms of products, or you might get locked up with those mainsprings, bearings, gears, and hands. Fax and e - mail are communication technologies used to send and receive information. The keywords are Communication And Information. Do people want a fax machine or do they want a way to send and receive information quickly, easily, and effortlessly?

ICQ, the online communications company, did not create a new fax machine or an improved e - mail system. ICQ answered this question by being the fi rst to create instant messaging in the mid -1990s. After a few years, AOL acquired ICQ for $283 million!

Got the point? Don ’ t think products. Think solutions that would become products.

Use Divergent Thinking

One of the components of strategic exploration is Divergent thinking. It is the thinking skill necessary for discovering more than one right answer. Generally speaking, to any given problem there is more than one possible solution. This is best explained and illustrated in an example.

Let’s consider e- mail publishing of newsletters and e - zines. The problem to the subscriber is spam. The problem to the publisher is the fi ltering of legitimate e - mails. Here are two potential solutions: (1) spam fi lters, spam checkers, and changing words, or (2) the use of RSS/XML feeds, news readers, and aggregators.

Always make sure you think of the two types of possible solutions— one that is related to products currently being used and one that is Totally unrelated. Solution 1 is an Enhancing Solution or innovation that improves upon what we already have. Solution 2 is a Shifting Innovation.

In general, people are resistant to shifting innovations because they involve learning and changing the way we currently do things.

They require us to budge from our comfort zone. However, it is such solutions, introduced at the right time, that make those seven - and eight - figure incomes!

Look at and Focus on the Near Future

The further out in time you try to look, the foggier it gets and the less accurate your predictions become. Nobody can make accurate predictions of the distant future. One of the main reasons for this is lack of information and data. Simply put, we have no clue or idea what technologies will be available in the distant future that might Totally—not just partially— change the way we do things.

What is impossible today is only so in the context of present technologies and resources. The distant future is simply impossible to see. Focus on the near future!

Look at the Past and Learn from It

We cannot always determine what ’ s going to happen in the future by looking at the past, but we can learn a lot from it. That ’s right. We learn from history that many so - called new and amazing things fl op in version 1.0 in the year 7750 but succeed beyond imagination in the year 7800. Every month, many superb solutions are introduced before their prime time. The problem lies in the timing, not the solution. Therefore, be very careful of statements like, “We tried something like that before and it didn ’t work.”

Tomorrow ’ s Technologies and Solutions Won ’ t Wipe Out Today ’ s

There are two main reasons for this. First, people are slow to adopt anything new, even if it makes their lives easier. Transitions are slow. It takes quite some time for old technologies and solutions to die out. The more widely used something is, the more time it takes

The world to make the transition. Second, new technologies and solutions could be complementary to today ’s solutions.

Today, we have snail mail, fax, and e - mail; printed books and e - books; HTML and Flash web sites; and RSS publishing. In the future, we ’ ll have both 2D and 3D web sites, and so on.

Always think Both/and Before thinking Either/or.

Mike Mograbi is an Internet marketer and creator of many Internet marketing Products and services. In mid - 2004 he wrote the best - selling, highly acclaimed E - book 378 Internet Marketing Predictions. He runs the leading Internet marketing news web site, Internet Marketing Newswatch ( Www. imnewswatch. com ).