In the ear­ly idea stage, hav­ing a first con­crete con­cept of how the prob­lem might be solved is already a key step. You’ve begun think­ing through how your prod­uct or ser­vice could make a dif­fer­ence for your tar­get group – and ide­al­ly, you’ve already gath­ered some ini­tial feed­back from poten­tial users to test your assump­tions.

This ear­ly exchange helps clar­i­fy whether your idea actu­al­ly address­es the prob­lem or still needs refin­ing. Both pos­i­tive and crit­i­cal input are valu­able at this stage. Sim­ple tools like pro­to­types or sto­ry­boards can help com­mu­ni­cate your idea and spark more tar­get­ed feed­back.

An ear­ly solu­tion idea – espe­cial­ly one shaped through input from oth­ers – lays the foun­da­tion for every­thing that fol­lows: from fur­ther prod­uct devel­op­ment to build­ing a mean­ing­ful impact strat­e­gy.