A Million Good Ideas

Do you have a great idea? ... Of course you do; you have at least three. In fact, you probably even have about five good ideas too. Maybe even another few mediocre ones you haven't bothered with. The difficult part of all your genius notions is that fundamentally their awesomeness doesn't matter. Your success will not necessarily depend on the perfection of the idea you choose to run with. What matters is all the work you put in, and of course-- luck.

The very fact that you're having an idea is a good indicator that someone else has it too. The stimulus of society, the environment of media consumption and a common place in history leads to lots of shared thinking, assumptions and creativity. Moreover, the larger point is that there are plenty of mediocre ideas that have grown into empires. As Henry John Heinz put it, "To do a common thing uncommonly well brings success." He created a ketchup fortune. That's all, just a condiment. Not revolutionary. It's the uncommon implementation that matters.

I've watched over and over, people who believe that a good idea will somehow take flight by itself and raise you aloft on its brilliance alone. Wouldn't that be nice? The difficult truth is that a great idea merely makes the work easier. A really open void in an industry means you'll have less competition and an efficient new way of doing business means it will be simple to lower prices and attract clients. But even a great idea comes with the day-to-day hardship of squishing tomatoes into sauce.

I signed off an email the other day with a line wishing a colleague: "Luck and Brute Force." I believe these are two of the only three ways to success. (I'm giving the great idea some credit.) Get lucky and hamburger fast food chains can become the norm boosting sales, but you still have to design the packet filling machine.

Not to be too negative, there is something actually as rare as we all think our ideas are-- excitement. You need to be passionate about your product, service, idea, project or whatever it is. This is the only other thing that can make the work even easier and more enjoyable. If you're happy making ketchup recipes you won't care if you have to eat a pound a day for two weeks. If you love designing production routing, then you're going to kick your competitions burger topping to the curb!

Just remember if you have a great idea, you're not the new market leader; you're still at the drawing board. You're still just dreaming. The point I'm trying to make is that you're going to need help and that help is going to put hours in. They're going to help with the hard part. Chances are they have a great idea too. If the tables were turned, how would you feel about the work you'd be doing? Would you see your time spent as less valuable than their time spent envisioning the next holy idea? No, work is work. There are a million good ideas. You may have a gem, but you're going to need help.

If you can stay excited, that's what's worth gold. Each moment of passionate work is worth 10 of drudgery. If you can transfer the excitement to your team then you're really creating value. It's not the idea; it's the capacity for enjoyment of the work.

So in summary...
Execution is the hard part. Excitement is the rarity.
The idea alone is worth about 1% equity.
Oh yeah, and luck.