The Myth of the Scarce Idea

This has been a period of rabid creativity and idea generation. A good sign. I’ve been hitting a ‘one new business idea a week’ pace, with all of them added to the list of opportunitites for further vetting/development. Tailor-made cross border suits, online micro payment tools, a crowdsourced photography for development project, a low cost West African manual well drilling enterprise model. And of course The First Drop is moving along quickly. A lot of ideas, some developed more than others. To move these forward I’m continuously bouncing them off smart people.

One common response when I share one of these with people is ‘but it’s already been done. See…?’. Maybe. But consider:

1) Innovation is often incremental. Your idea could improve on an existing idea in a way that unleashes the potential. Apple’s track record with the ipod is full of this. This innovation could be in quality, scale, network effect, service level, whatever. What’s holding the current players back? Does your concept address this? Can you do it better? Differently? Great.

2) There’s room for one more. Usually if there’s only one player, there’s room for more. Being a close follower can work well. The others have laid the groundwork, done the research, jumped the hurdles. Just slide in there and do the job better.

3) Success is 1% idea, 99% execution. This is the most important. Think nobody’s ever thought of your idea before? Think again. They’ve just never executed well. Execute well and you’re in. Or at least have a shot.

Now back to sorting through these to see which of these new ideas will stick.

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Tagged as: concepts, execution, ideas