Worldwide Success

Entrepreneurs are always looking for the big idea.  Many entrepreneurial pursuits are often put on hold because the potential entrepreneur keeps on waiting to come across that brilliant idea that will generate millions of dollars.  This concept that there is a big idea out there waiting to be found is so prevalent that it has even spawn off a very successful TV show: Donny Deutsch’s The Big Idea.

The thought of suddenly coming across the big idea is very enticing.  Many people hope to someday have that one strike of genius that leads to success – the one that will change their lives forever and allow them to live their dreams.  However, what most people don’t realize is that most great ideas don’t come from a strike of genius.  Most great ideas are derived from implementations of not-so-great ideas that eventually develop into unforeseen great ideas.

Flickr was not the result of a brilliant idea to develop a web site where people could share photos and build a social network around them.  Flickr came about when the developers of an online game realized that the photo sharing application was getting a lot more attention than the game itself.  But without the implementation of the online game, the founders of Flick would never have come across the brilliant idea that today is the most popular photo sharing application and one of the most valuable web assets out there.

The founders of Yahoo started their great empire by implementing a collection of links to many web sites.  The list became very popular and kept on growing until it eventually became a business.  Putting together a list of web sites was not a brilliant idea.  The relentless implementation of such a list was.

Ebay was born out of its founders’ desire to build of a system to help his girlfriend trade pez dispensers, and eventually became an online auction platform.  But what set eBay apart from many other auction platforms was that it was implemented first.  Pierre Omidyar did not spend a long time designing a perfect online trading platform.  He implemented the idea that he had at the time, and that idea grew to become the modern-day eBay.

There are endless other examples of how entrepreneurs built fabulous companies by implementing a not-so-brilliant idea that became refined over time and then took a life of its own.

Steve Pavlina recently wrote an excellent article called The Value of Ideas.  In this article Pavlina argues that ideas are a dime a dozen.  He explains that you can easily come up with a few gems if you simply write down a list of ideas in a brainstorming session.  The real value, he states, is in the implementation.  He then challenges his readers that are stuck in a never-ending idea loop to develop an action list and move from the idea stage to the implementation stage no matter how imperfect the idea may seem at that point.  Look at the questions he asks his readers:

“What good ideas are you sitting on right now? What can you do to shift one of those ideas from your imagination into physical reality? Do you realize that your very best ideas are worth less than a single mediocre idea you actually implemented?”

In the article Web Entrepreneurs Change the Rules of the Game we talked about how successful internet entrepreneurs are now focused on experimenting with multiple ideas without spending a lot of money.  If the idea sticks, great.  If it doesn’t, just move on to the next idea.  This is exactly what Pavlina was trying to explain.  Don’t get hung up on the idea.  Try different ones.  See what sticks.  Experiment cheaply.  Learn from your failures.  Move to the next idea quickly if it does not work, or see what other derivatives of your original idea might work instead.  When you implement an idea and it does not succeed, is there something you could observe from the experiment that you could use in the next one?

Do you know the story of the 3M Post-it Notes?  It all started with a failure, when a 3M scientist was trying to develop an adhesive that was supposed to be applied to nearly all substrates.  The actual result was a mass that could be applied everywhere but which could also be easily removed.  The failure turned into a huge success when another 3M researcher got frustrated with his bookmarks falling out of his hymn book at church and then realized that he could use the failed adhesive to hold the pieces of paper to the pages.  Most importantly, he could also easily remove them without any trouble or damage to the pages.

A failure turned into a success.  That is what you should be looking for relentlessly, not the big idea itself.  Move to the implementation of an initial idea as soon as you can and then see what happens.  By doing this, your chances of success will increase dramatically.  This is the new mantra of the successful entrepreneur.

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