Pitch It! offers creative entrepreneurs an opportunity to test their ideas

Creative entrepreneurs looking to cut their teeth in the startup world can look forward to the Pitch It! competition in September. Held yearly in Singapore as part of Asia on the Edge, the competition gives upcoming creative entrepreneurs a stage to present their ideas in front of potential investors.

Fredrik Härén, founder of interesting.org and renowned author of The Idea Book and The Developing World, is evaluating this year’s contestants. He says that business ideas should make the world a better place to live – ultimately the goal of business is to serve people in a clever and sustainable way. It has to be creative.

According to him, creativity “is a process of preparing, generating and having ideas as well as the process of making those ideas happen.”

An idea, put simply by Fredrik, is a combination of at least two previously known things in a new way that is better than what we used to do.

So if you’re an aspiring creative entrepreneur, now is a good time to start cracking and find that winning business idea.

Here’s Fredrik’s advice: “Customers are people. And people tend to be lazy. They just do what they did before. So if you start a new company, you need to be able to convince people who are clients somewhere else to switch to you – and to get them to do that you need to offer something that is different and better – and that calls for creativity.”

In the pursuit for creativity, entrepreneurs often fall into several traps, however.

Sometimes, they develop a highly creative but ultimately useless product; they create a useful product but fail to define the right target market; or they create a useful product with a well-defined market, but fail in execution. Creativity and execution must align in order for a business to succeed.

We can learn from the mistakes of others. Phogo was a mobile application that used package/image recognition to deliver product information in a user-friendly way to mobile phone screens. The idea was good, the market well defined, but the product never made it because of poor execution.

The founding team could not combine their full time jobs with the start-up idea which fatally slowed down the release of the product. As time passed, some key people left the team which made deadlines even more elusive.

Finding a mentor is one way of ensuring that you stay on the right track. Assembling the right team is crucial too. Pitch It! and Asia on the Edge are the perfect platforms for you to achieve both.

So if you have an idea, consider submitting it to Pitch It!. Shortlisted participants will have 10 minutes to pitch. Overseas shortlisted participants will be invited to Singapore and have their accomodation paid for. The deadline is 17 August 2012.

The winner will win S$10,000 in cash and the possibility of being incubated.

Sandra Peev – Guest Contributor

Sandra is a marketing specialist with experience in starting up business in Europe. She was part of a start up team for a management consulting company in Europe, where she gained a first-hand experience on building a business from scratch. Before moving to Singapore at the beginning of 2012, Sandra also worked as a Project Manager at one of the leading and fastest growing communication agencies in Central and Eastern Europe. She is a passionate traveler and relishes exploring exotic destinations. Sandra is a travel correspondent for the US based Reach the World Foundation and blogger for INSEAD Business School.