How did you come up with your idea?
Did you dream up a product, or did you scratch your own itch? Did the idea come to you out of the blue, or did you think on it long and hard? Did you canvas other people for ideas?
And once you had your idea, did you know right away it was a winner, or did it take some time to prove out?
I watched direct and indirect competitors for 5 years but I didn't do anything. I kept waiting and hoping that they'd innovate and they never did. Finally, 2 years ago, I got the opportunity to start so I started to do what all these others would never do: features, quality, business strategy. I'll do it so I don't have to be frustrated and annoyed by having it not exist.
The idea slowly inched its way into my consciousness. At first, I noticed what others were doing. Then, I idly wondered why they were lame. Then, I slowly became more and more interested until everything came together to start and then I kind of eased into it and, when I thought about stopping, I kept going.
I did try canvassing other people but it didn't work. "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." -- Henry Ford (apocryphal). I been studying the concept for years and everybody thought that they were an instant expert after thinking about it for literally less than a second. Everybody assumed that everybody else in the world was exactly like them. Everybody assumed that my ideas were exactly what already existed, even though they didn't know what my ideas were. If I were Henry Ford, people would have said, "Henry, I'm the perfect customer for your so-called automobile. But I'd never buy one because I love my horse, everybody loves their horses, but I don't like to ride it because it's so slow. How's this automobile going to power its mechanical legs? No, there's no market for your mechanical horse."
Some ideas seem to have endless possibilities to change and lead to innovations while other ideas seem to stagnate. The "fruitful ideas" keep and renew my interest while the "fruitless ideas" feel like a slog with a set end-point that I end up resenting and hating. A winning idea probably isn't winning for everybody. It's probably more about your personal relationship with an idea which makes it a winner for you. So, maybe not "good ideas" or "bad ideas" but "productive ideas for me (but maybe not you)" and "unproductive ideas for me (but maybe not you)".