How did you get your product idea?
Shooter: A couple of my companies were based on solving problems that I personally had and that I wanted to see solved.  That's supposed to be the gold standard of idea generation in entrepreneurship - solving a problem you've experienced PERSONALLY.  Interestingly, the two companies that were my "solve your own itch" startups are also by far the smallest (in revenue and impact) of the companies I have founded.  All of my other ideas - including the most successful ones - were not solving my own problems, but were trying to make an existing business or industry into the way I would want it to be in an ideal world, even though I have no personal interest or stake in them.  So, basically trying to solve problems for others while wearing rose-colored glasses.  This tends to happen one of three ways:1. I see an existing company and say, "Those guys are idiots...I can do that better." (So, naivete and overconfidence FTW.)2.  I see an opportunity to combine elements of multiple industries into a new offering (or bring an approach from one industry to another) in an attempt to make something closer to "the way I think things SHOULD be."3. MOST commonly, I apply a specific set of rules and methods to try to make a business or industry into the mold of "the way I think things SHOULD be" because I think it could be profitable for me to do so. ALL industries are screwed up in some way...and I have arrived at a set of 'tools' that I use over and over in an attempt to build a better company within individual industries.  Some of the 'tools' are tangible things, but many are just applying a new perspective or philosophy.  I've found a set of these that I can apply to any business, and I've internalized them to a degree that I can scan for new opportunities and apply them without thinking. I wrote some of them down for a few of my employees, and one guy said they reminded him of Roger Von Oech's Creative Whack Pack but with a more practical business focus.  I don't know if that is the case, I just think of them as universal lenses and I try looking at things with them in various combinations until everything seems to fit.  There's the famous A. Kay quote about a new perspective being worth 80 IQ points...well, I need all the help I can get, so I built a toolbox of "new perspectives" that I can use as needed.  Systemizing it has led to my most successful ideas.Once I've come up with a basic business model, I have to take the rose-colored glasses (and other lenses) off and be brutal to determine whether or not the project would actually work and whether or not it is worth the time/money/energy to do it. Less fun, but very necessary.