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Ideas are easy, implementing them is hard
Sunday, 22 October 2006
I've know a lot of intelligent people in my time - some of them highly intelligent. Yet many of them aren't much more successful than average. How come?
I think the big problem is that they often over-estimate the value of their ideas, and underestimate the value of implementing them.
Many smart people think a good idea is worth a lot. They start companies and print business cards with pictures of light-bulbs on them. They believe someone is going to pay them a lot of money to lie back and think deep thoughts - while some less intelligent underling does the work to actually realize what comes out of their over-sized brains. They suppose the way to get rich is to scribble down a design of something smart.
But they're wrong.
Actually, good ideas are so common that they have almost no value whatsoever. Go to any pub, and you'll see a bunch of blokes sitting around with beers, spouting out reasonably good concepts left, right and center. Every half-intelligent person can come up with an inspirational scheme for getting rich.
The people involved usually then worry about someone stealing their ingenious concept - as if it were a suitcase full of cash just waiting for someone to carry it away. They're terrified that as soon as such genius becomes public, competitors will spring up all over the place.
In fact, this is extremely unlikely. Competitors in any field can come up with their own equally brilliant concepts. They have no reason to steal an unproven idea from anyone else for one simple reason.
A good idea, like talk, is cheap.
The true sign of genius isn't coming up with the design in the first place, but implementing it. For even a dull idea, bought to realization, will stomp all over one that exists only as scribbles on a piece of paper.
Implementing any idea well - whether it's a romance novel, a piece of software, a business, an invention or a dance event - is extremely difficult. Much harder than actually coming up with the scheme in the first place. Being able to pull that off is where most competitive benefit comes from.
The man who's arguably the greatest inventor in history, Thomas Edison, summed it up succinctly when he said: "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration".
Because of this, and the reality that most intelligent people waste their time on inspiration only, you're offered a big competitive advantage in whatever field interests you. Simply by being a person who can successfully and completely implement ideas, you'll trounce even the most cerebral of idea-people. While they're agonizing about how to protect their precious scheme from concept-theft, you can be building something concrete.
Most ideas, no matter how brilliant, are worthless without a concrete implementation. That's because ideas are easy but implementing them is hard. Become a genius at execution - at seeing through an idea to the end - and you'll find others will treat you as extremely valuable. And you'll almost certainly become a great success.
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