Mingkit had a bad day. It started at work where he was trying to sell software upgrades to his company’s customers. “I really like your software systems, but it just takes so long to add it or to upgrade it every time a new version comes out,” the customer said. “Tell me once again all the advantages this version has and how much time an upgrade usually takes. I’ll need to balance those advantages against all the manpower needed to update all the systems. With summer just around the corner, I’m short-staffed with all the vacations anyway.”
It was a tough day and Mingkit had heard “No” more often then “Yes.” Leaving work, he grabbed his cell phone and called his friend Paul to see if he had plans for the evening. Paul said, “You caught me headed out the door. I’m late for this Time Management class I signed up for. I sure hope they help me. I write down all my appointments on my planner, but then I forget to look at the planner. Catch you another time!”
When Mingkit got home, he opened his refrigerator to grab a nice icy beer only to find out that he was out. . .again. Deciding he was too tired to drive to the grocery store, he grabbed a Coke and dug out his stamp collection to relax. This proved to be frustrating as the stamp mounts come in a little envelope and due to the high humidity were sticking together. “I don’t need this aggravation,” he mumbled, setting the collection aside for another day.
He grabbed the remote for his television and, in channel surfing caught the last few minutes of a TV special he had been waiting to see. “Oh, man, with 300 channels on my satellite TV system, it’s just too time consuming to read through a paper directory. If only there was a way to search the listings kind of like you do on the Internet.”
Finally, he headed to bed, dreading the next day when he’d have to face all those customer complaints once more. “I’d start my own business,” he mused, “if only I could come up with an idea.”
Poor, Mingkit. He did find a number of ideas in his bad day, but didn’t have the entrepreneurial alertness to spot them. Name five possible new businesses or products and the source of the ideas.