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|| personal development | TESTING
by Elana Ackerman, Ph.D.
ACID TEST
FOR AN IDEA
We need to understand the prospects of any commercial idea right from
the start. We could attend hundreds of classes for every matter that de-
serves attention, most of which would be a complete waste of our time and
money. Fortunately, investment specialists have already established criteria
that let entrepreneurs ascertain the viability of an idea while it’s still only an
idea. Here we acquaint you with one of the effective methodologies, one
called NAF.
NAF
stands for Novelty, Attractiveness,
Feasibility. These are very good crite-
ria for evaluating a commercial idea
that has come into your head, or sev-
eral that have came from a brainstorm-
ing session. A simple scoring system such as a ten-point
rating scale is applied to every criterion, or attribute, ac-
cording to which ideas are to be evaluated. So, let’s get
started.
Novelty
When evaluating a new idea, we try to establish how
new it is. It may be that someone else has already thought
of it, that it has already been implemented successfully in
other companies or countries. Surfing the Internet will help
you find out.
Attractiveness
When evaluating the appeal of an idea, we have to
switch off our yes/no “two-way radio” and let our emotions
work at full power. You might or might not like the idea, or
you might think it’s complete nonsense, but attractiveness
is just about the most important attribute for evaluating an
idea; in the opinion of specialists who work with this
ALPEON.COM
methodology, an idea is worth examining and developing
if its evaluation on this criterion comes to at least a 5 on
the 10-point scale.
Feasibility
When evaluating feasibility, we try to ascertain, if only
roughly, how easy it will be to implement the idea in prac-
tice.
The evaluation level should be close to an 8 on this at-
tribute. If feasibility is lower than 5, but you like the idea,
then it would be worthwhile to investigate how to find the
resources needed to increase its feasibility.
The goal of the NAF method is to identify in broad
strokes the likelihood of of actually implementing an idea.
Let’s try some examples.
If an idea
a) is not appealing and
b) not new, but
c) is easily accomplished,
then the likelihood of its implementation is considered
to be very low, because no one will want to invest in a bor-
ing idea that isn’t even new. If the idea is distinguished by
its