48-Hour Start-up: From idea to launch in 1 weekend. Fraser MBE Doherty

unique that businesses succeed. It’s partly by just being a little bit different – a bit better, a bit cheaper or a bit faster. It is undeniably also about having the best business model. But more than anything it’s about having a unique story, a unique brand.

      Sure, when I came up with the idea of making jam 100 per cent from fruit, this was a pretty novel idea. But it wasn’t completely unique. And, as I’m sure you can imagine, many people have copied our concept over the years. But the one thing that people couldn’t copy was my story.

      Now you might say, ‘Hey, it’s easy for you to say that – you had this cute story of you and your gran.’ Well, it’s nice of you to say so, but to be honest I’m sure you also have a great story. About why you’ve decided to start your business, perhaps; or about who you are and what you believe in. The simple fact that you are a unique person is part of what makes your business unique, no matter how ordinary or commoditised its products might be.

      Look, if my dad had lost his job and started selling jam door to door in middle age, that would have been a story. And if my gran had started selling jam in her senior years, that would have been the best story of all. Whoever you are, there is some story you can tell, something you can say that makes your brand special.

      By bearing this in mind, you can take some of the pressure off yourself to come up with something completely different. Your idea doesn’t need to be unique, it just has to be authentic. It has to come from the heart and be something about which you are passionate. With this in mind, you can start to look at the world as full of opportunity – if you don’t have to do something unique, you can do anything.

      SAME PROBLEM, DIFFERENT SOLUTION

      If one thing makes you aware of the opportunity to reinvent even the most everyday of items, it’s travel. I’ve been fortunate enough to travel to over 50 countries over the past few years, partly with SuperJam and partly for my own adventures.

      What you quickly realise when you start to travel is that so many of the things we consider to be expected or essential in our lives are in fact alien concepts to people who happen to live in other countries.

      Take some of the most fundamental ideas we have in Western society; that a toilet should be like a seat, with a lid and a flush. Or that food should be eaten with a knife and fork, sitting at a table. Most countries in the world view these fundamental things differently. I’ve been to places where they eat with their right hands, with chopsticks, with a spoon and fork, or just with a fork. I’ve been to places where I wasn’t even sure how to use the toilet, or indeed whether I wanted to, so primitive was its design. And I can tell you, this isn’t a cultural one-way street – in Japan they think our toilets are barbaric and in India they think it’s disgusting that we touch our food with our left hands.

      When you realise that even the most fundamental ideas about how we should live can be called into question, you realise that it is possible to reinvent anything and everything. And someone will.

      I like to imagine a person from 100 years in the future coming to visit us here today. There are some things they will no doubt be familiar with, like ring pulls on fizzy-drink cans or shoelaces. But they’ll be amazed that we don’t yet have so many things they take for granted. The only difference between now and then is that some entrepreneurs in the meantime will come up with new ideas and products and, cumulatively, they will change the world.

      Hopefully by now, with all this talk of changing the world, I’ve convinced you that the world is full of opportunity; that things are only the way they are because someone else made them that way – and that you have just as much right to change them as they did. Your idea can be unique and transformative, but the chances are that it won’t be, and that’s okay too.

      UNITED STATES OF GREAT IDEAS

      If you do have the time to travel in search of a great business idea, almost certainly your best bet is to take a flight to California or New York; still today the world’s epicentres of entrepreneurship. People literally travel from all around America and around the world to move to Brooklyn or to San Francisco, with an idea in their head and a MacBook under their arm.

      Any time I’ve visited these places I’ve seen restaurant concepts, food products, apps and all kinds of things that I’ve figured could also work back home. And, no doubt, many of these American start-ups will make it across the pond to conquer Europe if someone here isn’t quick enough to build their own version of the same concept.

      If you look at many of the great entrepreneurial success stories in Europe – for instance Innocent Smoothies, Ryanair, Kwik-Fit and BrewDog – they took their inspiration, at least in part, from what they saw happening in the States. In California they really lead the way when it comes to healthy food, craft beer and even craft coffee. In all my business ideas I have taken at least some inspiration from what I’ve seen going on over there.

      For whatever cultural and historical reasons, our American cousins make for great entrepreneurs. They don’t seem to have the same fear of failure as we do and it would seem that they’re born with a natural self-confidence that helps them put their best foot forward from the moment they’re born.

      Whatever kind of business you are in, check out the American blogs on that topic. Talk to some Americans. Sign up for the magazines that are available over there. Purposefully go looking for a good idea to bring back home.

      You can usually assume that if you’re working on a product, there’s probably someone in America who has already sold a million of them. Rather than come up with your own way of doing things from a blank piece of paper, why not look at them as your free Research & Development department?

      They may have spent years working on this idea, testing different business models and designs. What you see now is the outcome of that: an idea that has been refined and tuned to succeed commercially. Why do the hard work all over again when you can simply stand on their shoulders? Don’t be afraid of copying something that works. Sure, do it in your own way, but don’t feel there’s anything shameful about remixing other people’s work – DJs have been doing it forever.

      BE SECOND, FIRST

      One of the best pieces of advice in business someone has given me came from the Scottish entrepreneur Sir Tom Farmer, the founder of Kwik-Fit. He believes in the philosophy of being ‘second, first’. And I think that this strategy of being a ‘fast-follower’, whether you are taking inspiration from a business at home or abroad, is a great one. The importance of being first to market, the so-called ‘first mover advantage’, is dead. It was an idea initially popularised in the 1980s: that the first player in a given market would have some kind of inherent advantage from being first.

      Sure, there can be all kinds of advantages that come from this – the kudos, the media coverage, the ‘head start’ on the competition. But when you think of the bigger picture, you realise that this doesn’t tell the whole story of what it means to go first.