Here's how you can spot entrepreneurial opportunities within your field as a system administrator.

Compare the unrelated. What’s your favorite features of your video streaming content providers site/app? What do you love about one banks app compared to another. Does your doctor’s patient portal “get it right”? How? What amongst these apps functions frustrate you the most? Now think of ways their best features can apply to your product. Have you avoided their mistakes. Do they share common functionality that you can apply to provide a built in shorthand for quick and easy use. What your user wants, appreciates and dislikes are probably the same things you do as a user.

Add perspective? The moon is a circle until you land on it…, perspective changes everything. Take a step back and look for not only what you can do for your market, but for what you can do for their market, and what you can do for theirs suppliers. Could you improve how they intake data/materials and streamline it. What about highlighting changes to the output or the facets of output. Consider more than the area of concern, but analyze the before and after, the intersections and overlaps. Could your ticket system provide the advantages your demographic desires and also an external interface for your demographics customers? Can you build an ordering inventory system that also provides real time data for the accounting team?

Use different questioning techniques. Pointed questions to flush out others perspectives on thoughts of your own and test and compare your inner dialogue to theirs, without biasing questioning in a way that might influence answers and provide less true feedback. But also mix in open question that allows others to stream experiences and perspectives that may help you stumble on enhancements or further uses for your original idea.