Will It Fly? How to Know if Your New Business Idea Has Wings...Before You Take the Leap

Supplemental reading for my course.

I bought the book because I wanted guidelines to start a small business. I was really excited because I thought I had found the key to all my doubts and questions. The more I read the book the more frustrated I got. I have an MBA and I know how complex a business could be, but this is too much. 44 variables maybe could count on a BIG BIG launch, but what if you want to start a small dojo or a small language academy? The more I read the more frustrated and dissapointed I got. I believe that in my particular case I bought the wrong book.

This book, written by an inspiring mentor, will provide the framework and guidelines to direct your ideas into a viable business venture. "Will it Fly" clearly and concisely makes you think seriously about your new business and motivates you to put your best foot forward in the marketplace.

I have been in and around start ups for years now, most recently as a senior executive of a security software company. I have read more books on entrepreneurship than I can remember and I concentrated on entrepreneurship in business school. I have never seen a book as penetrating, practical and on target as this one for the topic that it addresses.What makes this book different is:- it is the only one that thoroughly addresses a start up at concept phase, before your business plan, a partner, money or anything else. Every other entrepreneurial book starts after you've decided you have a good idea or devotes a token chapter that tells you to do market research. This book actually steps you through evaluating and modifying your idea to make it fly.- it provides a practical thorough checklist, with detailed explanations, to evaluate a product/business concept quickly and completely and on how to improve the ratings if your business idea doesn't fly the first time around. What makes this checklist even more valuable is that the criteria are based upon the real-world entrepreneurial experiences of the author.- it gets you to focus on your gut-feelings about your idea. If you think you have a good idea - the spreadsheets all work out - but your gut feelings tell you that all is not well, this book will help you identify why and guide you on how to fix it.- it will tell you if your business idea is a bad one - before you spend a dime. Better be sure you're not "pretending not to know".- it shows you how to do a first-pass evaluation of any idea in 20 minutes or less, without doing a bunch of premature research.My only complaint is that Tom started teaching at Columbia Business School in 1996 and I graduated in 1990, so I missed him by six years.If you're going to start your own company, take a job at a start up or young company, fund a start up or launch a new product or service, buy this book.

The idea in this book is this: You assess your business against 44 simple criteria. If the business does not score high against any of the criteria, modify the business model so the score improves.The criteria are very simple. You are asked questions like these (I am not giving the exact criteria here): * Do you have proven customer? * Do you have the necessary capital tied up? * Is your competition easy to tackle?Against each question, you do self-scoring. For example, * If the capital is yet to be tied up, you give yourself low score and start working towards tying up the capital (so you can improve the score). * If you have tough competitors, you look for a niche to hide from them or add more ammunition (money, skills, protection) before going to the battleBy the time you have finished massaging your business (or business idea) to deserve good scoring, you would have finished giving it a new and far superior shape.I read this book several years ago. Ever since, I had studiously applied these filters on every one of my new business ideas. It had always helped me to identify bottle necks and hidden land mines and remove them before going to the market place.It is unbelievable how a simple, no-brainer exercise can be this effective.

I sincerely hope no one else will end up wasting their money purchasing this book.I bought "Will It Fly" looking for practical advice about how to begin a new business and evaluate the quality of a business idea. What I got was a book filled half with meaningless self-esteem boosters and vague sports metaphors and half with laughably inapplicable advice. To give an example, one of the chapters of the book was devoted to the idea that if your business idea may be impeded by a law, simply lobby congress to change the law. A simple, practical solution for a guy trying to start his first small business right? Additionally, a disturbing, reoccurring theme of the book was the advice to retain a lawyer as soon as possible as some of the actions the book is encouraging your emerging business venture to do may one day be seen as illegal by the Department of Justice.Who wrote this garbage?

This book is an ok book. i got this so i can learn more about the world of business. the thing is, the book is not quite good at explaining the facts.

Will it fly? Not on Kindle. The Kindle edition of this book is unreadable. By unreadable I mean there are portions of the text you can not get to show up. Adjust the text size switch to landscape, do what you may they won't show up. This is my experience with the Kindle 2.

This is a work book, it is very detailed and comprehensive, but it is not a "good read" more of an "essential read" if you are planning to start a multi million dollar/pound business. Or you are planning on embarking on a significant expansion of an already large business.The author states clearly that this is not for the one man band - it is not, but it is also less valuable for the small to medium business. The reason - it is too detailed and you are likely to skip sections that you feel do not apply and so the rating system will become skewed. If you do use it for the purpose I can see it being useful to force you to think about issues you may have missed.It is a book that is very important for a very specific period in the life of a business. For the weeks or months after that initial brainwave, it could help you determine if your brainwave will support you as you surf to success or if you could avoid the rocks and surf elsewhere. It could, as the author suggests, help you redirect the direction of your wave. Your initial thought could be near the mark but miss an opportunity that was "near adjacent". The rigour of the exercise would make your idea stronger or allow you to drop it.I can see this book being very relevant to investors and business coaches who are looking to test the strength of a prospect or help strengthen a business's plan.For me, as a system developer for medium sized businesses, I will use the book to evaluate my clients to see how best to direct the development of the business system so that the client can avoid the pitfalls and head towards a more targeted and successful outcome.

Excellent.

Awesome service. This was my 2nd purchase and I will buy again from you next time!!I love the book!

A complete time waste

Not much practical info. More a quiz to rate your idea based on key points