Idea

"Idea simulator" for testing products and services

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jnikola Feb 15, 2022

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Feasibility

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An idea
An online virtual "game" where you test your idea on different markets, in different scenarios, policies, situations and get feedback. 
Why?
Reduce the time and money spent on turning ideas into businesses
Predict possible problems in your business model and improve the end product before it even reached the market
Increase the number of ideas turned into successful businesses
Create a playground where changes in businesses, services, or even political regimes can be tested
How would it work?
Simulation and testing playground
Let’s say you are creating prototype of flying cars. You sign up as an idea creator. After you fill in your profile details where you comprehensively describe your idea, you are entering a world like SIMS, where your idea is a developed final product ready to be tested in the market. You choose the "environment" where you want to test your idea. After testing it in current markets, you get results of how successful could be your idea in this phase of development, what are the main problems, etc. In other words, you could see your flying car with all the performances that you have imagined as a simulation in real world, test it, modify it, and so on. You could do this as many times you want and get valuable informationhow your product would perform on the market.  
Feedback
Other people, who signed up as guests, could come as players and see what you are offering and comment your product so you could get market feedback without even having your product live. To have reliable market feedback, you as idea creator, could see guests’ profile to know whether you got comment from professor from MIT, some engineer from company like RIMAC or someone else who may be less reliable. In that way, you will enrich your idea with different opinions, master all the possible obstacles, and have reliable track on how to create product that market would love and people would like to use.
Game guidance and advisement
Using data analytics and machine learning you could have artificial game advisor who could provide you some tips and guide you considering previous comments for similar ideas. For example, most common mistakes that have been made which are likely to happen to your idea, or some tips and tricks which are most likely to help it perform better on the market. 
Additional information
The "environments" 
The environment you choose to see how your idea performs would be dynamically updated in real-time with the newest information on the targeted market's policies, relations between parties, cash flow, black market, competitors and other companies. It would function like "football manager" for businesses and markets. Each new version of the software would be updated with new things and would serve as a better virtual representation of the real situation. The start-up could then do some simulations of their product performance in different environments and plan their commercialization better.
Comparison of the platform to the idea fairs, internet forums,etc. 
Getting the feedback for your ideas is great, but can be done by visiting fairs, conferences, etc. Here it would be made easy by moving it online. The most complex thing would be the testing part. To test the idea on the current market, complex algorithm and virtual representation of the real world markets should be developed. The algorithm would fit the idea in one of numerous categories based on the end goal, tools,  it into a format readable by the virt
Questions
Would you be willing to try something like Idea simulator before making mistakes that could have been avoided? Do you find it as a good solution for examining the market?
What other useful information you would like to have or get through the game?

product ideas startup ideas business idea service ideas test online platform

Creative contributions

Online Avatar uses the idea/ product and gives feedback

Shubhankar Kulkarni Feb 15, 2022

There are online games that let you create a virtual life. Such games could be great environments to test any new idea/product. The idea could be anything like a new model for a peaceful human society or testing a flying car to study its effect on the human psyche and road traffic and air traffic. When players enter the game, they get a notification of the new idea. They might choose to buy/ use it. Just the number of people wanting to use the product could be a data point for the company launching the product. More information can be made available like what other things the player indulges in online. Correlations could be used to target the appropriate population in real life.

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Povilas S3 years ago

I was about to comment that this is perhaps the best way for the idea simulator system to work. As I understand, the initial idea of J. Nikola was to mostly use complex algorithms to test the idea automatically (similarly how AI-driven virtual characters in the game can play around with virtual objects), but I think it would be too complicated to test the real-life success of the idea that way, best would be to develop a virtual world with real humans as players, just as Shubhankar Kulkarni suggests. 

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jnikola3 years ago

Great idea! I immediately imagined environments like the online games you mentioned, being very complex and with many add-ons. Something like GTA V, where you can launch your product prototypes and see the reaction. I think this has great potential.

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Shubhankar Kulkarni3 years ago

J. Nikola It definitely does. Games like GTA have a currency, which is a good thing to test any new product. You could buy the product in the game and use it (test it). Depending upon how much money you have in the game, you can decide to buy it sooner or later, or never. All this is extremely important data for the product company.

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Design Labs for new products

Contrived _voice Feb 15, 2022

I like the concept of this for consumer feedback. makes you wonder what if you made it fully customizable?
Say you wanted to make sleeping pods for sleeping on tree branches (hypothetical) but you wanted to know what people would want in such a pod. You would of course have a bunch of feasible options to choose from as well a some experimental ones.
The Idea would be to throw all of them at your intended market and let them design them as they please. Kind of like they do with cars in racing games. Once the market is done with them, you would be able to know which design would be the most popular as well as the configuration that most people found most comfortable.
Your product would be essentially made by the market, for the market.

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jnikola3 years ago

Very cool idea! I imagine it would work with new cars features, communication devices, social media, shops, services, etc. Nice! I'll have this one in mind.

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Not only an idea but a situation simulator, too

jnikola Mar 17, 2022

Idea
Test situations of local or national concern, so that things can be better planned or prevented.
How would it work?
Imagine a simulation that looks similar to GTA V (maybe even the same), but with multiple layers of complexity. That means public transportation, unpredictable behavior of people, bacteria, animals (all with their DNAs and mutations), wars, economic crashes, and everything that happens daily in our world. Now imagine letting a new virus inside a such simulation. Or support a rebellion in a part of the country. Let the games begin!
An example
A similar thing was done in Pandemic Simulation Game. 700 participants started as healthy but, randomly, some of them got sick. From there, players were presented with many scenarios to choose from, which would have a certain effect on the pandemic development. The outcome of the research was that some strange unconvential strategies were more effective than the others. That was just one example how a gamifed approach could have helped policy makers and scientists create more effective measures of combating COVID-19.