Regardless of which ideation method you're using is that they all, at most, will guide you to the entrance of an idea maze. The real challenge in entrepreneurship is understanding and navigating this maze.

Many aspiring entrepreneurs fail because they see their business ideas in "low resolution".

"Let's do music on the internet!" or "Let's build a note-taking app" are perfect examples of ideas in "low resolution". Ideas like this are initially worthless.

In contrast, to have a real chance at success, entrepreneurs need to see potential ideas in "high resolution". This means, that the entrepreneur understands all the permutations of the idea, all possible branchings of the decicion trees, and is able to think them through to their logical end results.

This is what Balaji Srinivasan calls the idea maze. It all starts with a low resolution idea, which Balaji calls the entrance of the idea maze.

The next essential step is then seeing the idea in high resolution. In Balaji's terminology, means understanding the complete idea maze, not just the entry point.

A potentially good idea is then one specific path through the idea maze.

<aside> 💡 You can see this guide and projects like Opportunities.so as my personal attempt to get some grasp on the "I need a business idea" idea maze.

</aside>

Msot ideas can lead to profitable businesses if you're able to understand and navigate the corresponding idea maze. And while it's almost inevitable that different founders find the entrance to a given idea maze, it's extremely unlikely that two founders navigate it in the same way. In other words, while "Let's do music on the internet!" is far too generic, there are lots of angles that allow for originality.

To start seeing ideas in high resolution, you need to become obsessed with the market, to study its history, and to talk to as many insiders as you can (if you're not one yourself). Good indicators of a "high resolution" understanding is that you're able to explain what has been tried before and what they did right or wrong. Almost all good ideas have been tried before. So you need to be able to explain why you're expecting a different outcome.