Before you decide to conquer the world of venture creation, you need to determine whether your concept is feasible. By assessing the market opportunity before you pour an incredible amount of time, effort, and money into your concept, you are increasing your success rate and strengthening your foundation.

By conducting a concept feasibility study, you are screening problems that are traditionally discovered far into the venture creation process. Concept feasibility allows you to evaluate your idea and strengthen its chance to reach commercialization. Approaching your concept in a logical manner will allow you to not only improve your outcome, but to determine how your product/service cures "pain":

1. Overt Benefit. Does the concept convey a clear benefit or advantage to a user or customer? Does the customer know the concept creates value?
2. Reason to Believe. Is the user or customer able to accept the level of benefits that the concept claims to deliver?
3. Dramatic Difference. The concept must be meaningfully differentiated from existing solutions on a sustainable basis. Is the concept unique from the current or conventional solutions - either an incremental difference or a breakthrough advance?

If a concept feasibility study is not performed, you can make lethal mistakes that could not only cripple your company but also could prevent it from ever hitting the market. Four common fatal mistakes are:

1. Misunderstanding industry attractiveness
• High barriers to entry
• Ability to differentiate
• Existence of effective substitutes
• Ability to influence suppliers and customers
2. No real competitive advantage
• Unique ways to compete must be developed
• Not merely copying, imitating, or slightly improving upon a competitive strategy
3. Pursuing an unsustainable competitive position
• Customer service leadership is easy to mimic
• Lack internal capacity to be a leader in technology
• Pursue conflicting strategies
4. Compromising strategy for growth
• Balance must exist between growth and competitive strategy
• Do not be distracted from the core strategy by capitalizing on short term opportunities

Concept feasibility is designed to evaluate creative ideas and accelerate them towards commercialization. The more due diligence you perform on the front end, the more likely you are to reach venture success. The Indiana Venture Center will assist you in examining your concept to determine whether the market holds a place for your product/service. By working with the Indiana Venture Center staff and completing the concept feasibility, you are taking the steps necessary to improve your outcome of success.

**Information for Concept Feasibility was provided by the Idea Accelerator Initiative program presented by the Ball State University Midwest Entrepreneurial Education Center and the Indiana University Kelley School of Business Johnson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation.**