Every entrepreneur dreams of the ‘big one’, that one idea that is stunning in its simplicity, commercial value and innovation. Venture capitalists and other ‘money men’ are constantly searching for just such ideas – and up until very recently the web was a fertile meeting ground for money men and brilliant ideas. But can these landmark businesses, the like of Google, be predicted and forecast or are they purely just chance occurrences?

I started to ponder this question whilst at this years dConstruct, whilst struggling to follow a presentation by Jermey Keith. One of the ideas that Mr. Keith appeared to be trying to put forward was that truly amazing business ideas are just chance events and they can not be planned for or forecast. His logic was somewhat difficult to follow, but he appeared to be making a tenious link to black swans in nature…

I would suggest that his argument may have been ‘for entertainment purposes only’ – although I am not sure (!!) Perhaps he might decide to enlighten us should he read this post.

It seems fairly evident to me that in fact it should be eminently possible to plan for the next big thing. Although it is clear that with any such forecasting in a rapidly changing landscape such as the web, there will be an element of luck. Mapping user direction and extrapolating behaviours leads to an insight about the future and what might well be the next killer application.

There is no point looking at ‘now’ and simply doing more of the same, you must move forward. We still receive regular requests from hopeful entrepreneurs asking ‘how much does it cost to build a social network?’. Our answers is of course always the same ‘it depends’ but why on earth would you want to build one? Does the planet need another social network – surely a badly trained ape could be more inspired than that?

It has seemed to me that the concept of mobile was always going to be important – and indeed with the emergence of devices such as the iPhone we are rapidly moving into that era. But why does the calendar on my iPhone not set my sat nav which in turn should work with the engine management system of my car (amongst other things)? My life has many devices in it, so it appears very limiting that only my phone and PC share data together.

Why?

Simple. Because if put a meeting in my diary right now for tomorrow morning in Reading I want to know that I have enough fuel in the car to get me there! If I don’t then I want the route plan to take this into account (take me to a fuel station). Also whilst these devices are at it, I want the route planned (in advance obviously) and then I want my computer to keep and eye on the traffic (starting from now and make some useful forecasts through the night), keep the alarm setting on my phone updated to the right time for me to get up so that I am not late for the meeting – given traffic, lifestyle settings (dog needs walking), anticipated parking at my destination and so on.

All achievable stuff, but nobody seems to be thinking in terms of joined up life cycle applications as yet. And with only a few moments thought you can appreciate a commercial model that would underpin this idea. The above of course is just one simple example of part of a life style application. There are many more!

Ah I hear you say it is a shame that we are in a recession… It is of course far from being a shame. As Guy Kingston discussed only last week in his excellent podcast, tough times can create some very favourable opportunities for business growth. As conradictory as that sounds it is actually true!

So maybe there is hope and we should be motivating ourselves to build the future? TechCrunch published a very interesting article recently that would seem to agree.

Chance? Not a chance!