Have you ever seen a work of art and thought, “I could have made that”? Have you heard of a new brand and thought, “I came up with that idea years ago!” Have you witnessed a new product announcement and thought, “another company already came up with that!” If not, you’ve seen many people make these claims.
The fallacious belief driving this is that ideas are valuable. I’m sure you’ve seen a lemonade stand but have you ever seen an idea stand? No, because there’s no such thing as a billion dollar idea, and you don’t get any cookies for having come up with the idea first. Ideas frolic inside a magical summer garden where anything is possible. The value is created during execution when you open the door to the harsh winters of reality.
So many of us subconsciously believe ideas have value that we get attached to our ideas. We instinctively want to defend our old beliefs and ways of doing things, even if we’ve adopted them arbitrarily. This is a detrimental way to live and a devastating one if you want to start your own company. Countless businesses have been run into the ground because the founders have adamantly stuck to their original ideas even in the face of mounting contradicting evidence.
Around the time the iPhone 3GS was first released, an entrepreneur in San Francisco who was a Kentucky whiskey fan created an app called Burbn. It allowed people to check into locations, plan future events, post photos, and get points for checking in with friends. He was continually making adjustments to the app to make it better, but he noticed that the most used feature of the app wasn’t check-ins. It was the app’s ability to post and share photos.
So he invested all of his investors’ money into refining the app’s ability to easily share and like photos, apply filters, and post comments. Since the old idea proved to be of no value, he removed all of the other features and submitted the renamed app to the App Store. Two months after its release, Instagram already had a million users. Co-founder Kevin Systrom later said that Burbn was a false start and that you always have to be ready to evolve into something else. In other words, don’t get attached to one idea.
In another case, three guys started an online dating service called Tune in, Hook Up in 2005. It allowed people to meet others by uploading a self-introduction video. The website didn’t take off, but the trio realized something after the Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson incident at the Super Bowl. They not only found that they couldn’t find any videos of it on the internet, but they also couldn’t find any decent video uploading sites. They dumped their dating idea and took advantage of their easy to use upload feature to transform it into a video sharing platform called YouTube.
Up north in Vancouver, a game company in 2009 had just released their first 2D multiplayer role playing game. It failed. But in the process of creating the game, it developed a piece of software that helped employees collaborate with each other. They realized this had potential and transformed themselves into makers of a cloud-based team messaging platform that they then marketed to other companies.
Almost 80% of Fortune 100 companies now use Slack. Take a moment to reflect on this incredible achievement: they went from making games, which they sold direct to consumers (B2C) and completely converted to making collaborative software, which they sold direct to businesses (B2B). This was a significant change, not just in the product but in their mindset. Would you be able to make such a switch?
Coming up with the idea wasn’t these entrepreneurs’ core talent. Many of us come up with ideas all the time. They became enormously successful thanks to their ability to pay close attention to what people wanted, being willing to move beyond their initial product, and not fusing their identity to their idea.
So remember, don’t worship ideas, don’t cling to them in your business or personal life, and be willing to adjust or completely change your ideas. Following these principles might just be the best idea you’ll ever have.
