Finding a good problem to focus your research on or build a startup around is a challenge and can greatly influence your success and growth potential. What is a good problem and how to find one? How to make sure that it is a problem that you can tackle?

On Tuesday the 28th of November 2017, the Innovation Forum King’s College London branch organised a talk delivered by Ana Florescu, Head of Good Problems at Science Practice, on finding a good problem to solve, piloting a series of 8 seminars that will focus on the steps from an idea to establishing a successful enterprise, potentially with a global impact.

The seminar took place in the Function Room in Henriette Raphael building at Guy’s Campus, King’s College London. The seminar commenced with an introduction of the Innovation Forum delivered by Vicky Butt, the president of the IF KCL branch. Vicky underlined the aim of IF, explained about the IMAGINE IF! Accelerator which is run by the IF to provide support, financial and mentoring, for fresh ideas to be translated to innovative products. Vicky then talked about past and upcoming events organised by the IF team and then introduced Ana to the audience.

According to Ana, the scientific method is an excellent skill for successful entrepreneurship. But why is that and what it is that you learn by performing a science experiment in addition to learning about the science? In fact, by doing a PhD, for example, you do a thorough research of the field and you comprehend it, you identify research gaps, you form a hypothesis for a solution, you conduct an experiment, and then you analyse the data generated and draw conclusions. All the above are essential skills for entrepreneurship.

Time is an important element that determines the quality of a problem. Ana underlined that the market may not perceive a matter as a problem yet, or maybe it is too late and a matter is not a problem anymore because there have already been effective solutions.  

According to Ana, a good problem should be real, should have potential to have a global impact and should be ambitious yet solvable and, as you may have realised, finding a good problem is a challenge itself.

The seminar was also live streamed on KCL Innovation forum Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/KCLInnovationForum/

The participants had the opportunity to network during a free lunch and refreshment time after the talk.

As mentioned above, this seminar was the first of a series of 8 seminars and the IF team is looking forward to seeing you in our future events.

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