Entrepreneurs: How do you come up with Ideas? How did they do it?

[Rip]

For the past 5-6 months or so, me and my group have worked on creating a new "social media" website...Or atleast, we have been trying to come up with a unique idea for such a website. We have come across a number of ideas, but none of them are really unique enough or atleast attractive enough for us to continue on making the website (and pour thousands of dollars into the project).

So, my question is, how did the world-famous entrepreneurs do it? How did they come up with their Ipods, facebooks, HD-TVs, production companies, Playboys, Harry Potter, American Idol, etc? Did they specifically look at what consumers/people demanded at a particular time period, or did they come about such things by chance and created demand "randomly."

Is the idea behind "entrepreneurship" centred around "creating/inventing" new things, or is it taking one thing and finding a new use to it? I mean, facebook wasn't the first social network, it was, in fact, a derivative of "hot or not" and another Harvard-based social networking website in 2003/2004.

We're trying to create a "new service." But our discussions end there most of the time, because we don't actually know what "new service" means. How did Twitter or facebook create new service?

Thanks for your help. O and, what are your likes and dislikes of using giant social networking tools like Twitter, facebook, foursquare, LinkedIn, etc (kinda like a survey).

[Tesuo]

Here is an Idea, why not start an advice web site where you have people who have been threw similar situations or people who have an insight of things and can help guide people in the right direction with what ever problem they maybe facing. your Friend tesuo best of wishes with that project!!

[Meg]

For most the idea came first and only later did they figure out how to make money from it. Think of something you wish you had that does not exist and then how or if it can be made and only then how to sell it to other people.

The only social media I use is facebook and only have family as friends. We use to pass around letters to keep track of everyone, but facebook works better. If I wanted to create a new web site I would make one that only connected families with graphs of family trees so I would remember that jane was aunt ruth's granddaughter etc.