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The Big Picture
of Your Idea

Along the road to commercialization, you technical descriptions draw out “The Polite
will need to convince many different types of Nod” – quite the opposite of what you need
people about the value of your idea. Your biggest to accomplish here. Your goal is to capture a
challenge will not be a technical one – it will be to high level overview of your idea rather than the
get others to see the business value in what you’ve details of how it works. With this basic level of
created. Managers, colleagues, financial investors, understanding, your audience can engage with
and even your family will want to understand what you in conversation to learn more.
you are proposing to do and why it has value.
Creating a big picture view of your idea helps
A common mistake many of us make at the people to quickly grasp the essence of what you
early stage is assuming people have a certain are proposing to do. A big picture presents the
level of knowledge about our ideas. We elements of your idea from a user’s perspective.
launch into detailed technical discussions using It creates a personal connection for people to
industry buzzwords and acronyms that leave understand how your idea could be used in a
our audience confused and bewildered. Lengthy commercial context.

CLOSCLO E-UP: Big Picture View of Pathogen Detection

Until recently, detecting
pathogens in our food and
water supply has required
samples to be sent to a lab
for testing, taking 24-­36
hours to complete. This
“big picture” view shows
a new handheld pathogen
detection device that
completes the analysis
on-­site in 15 minutes.

1-4 What’s Your Idea? Courtesy: MTEC SmartZone