So here's a very interesting article about customer development - outlining an actually rather simple process for finding out the language people use to talk about your service domain, and who those people are.
But let's consider for a moment what that actually means. When doing customer development, you're kind of understanding a group of people united by a common need - maybe before they even know this. Your task is to find that need, solve it with something you already have (or, in product development, build something that solves it), and then contact those people in a believable way so that they will also see that their need can be solved.
1. Find the need and the people: customer development
2. Find the solution: product development
3. Communicate the solution: marketing
4. Manage the solution: technical support
5. Manage customers' interactions with the solution: customer support
Each of these areas is kind of a part of any business plan that involves solving needs for money. Which might be all business, but I'm not prepared to make such a sweeping generalization.
So here's the thing. How automated can the discovery part of this process be made? Can I spit out business ideas just by searching yet?
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