There is a serious risk to your ability to succeed when you have a new idea and you want to turn it into a business, but you can avoid it…
You think of something that you think is a great idea. It has the potential to help lots of people and you can see in your mind’s eye the effect it coud have. The excitement is raging, you’re thinking of how it would look, the people who will use it, the benefits it will bring and the success you could have. You might have already started thinking of the name and checked if the web domain is available…………and then……….the kettle finishes boiling!!
We’ve all been there and had the world’s greatest product idea that would help thousands and fix a real life problem and you’re convinced it will make your mark on the world. Then 10 minutes later you’ve figured out three reasons why your idea will fail and then the idea is snuffed out before it even took a breath.
BUT – that’s not the threat we’re talking about today.
Let us assume your idea has passed this killer hurdle and is now gliding its path up into the upper hemisphere of your consciousness and is rising on a cloud to become a business. So you’re investing in this one and it’s managed to shake off the dark clouds of failure (for now). Your enthusiasm for this one is galvanizing around it, making this idea the nucleus of your attention. You start writing lists of the things you need to support the idea – like all good behavioural gurus will tell us – you start to build ‘legs’ under the idea to help stand it up. You search on the web for domain names, you start to research your idea in Google and look at Competitors, Alternatives, Locations and lots of other areas…..
THIS IS THE THREAT TO YOUR IDEA
THIS IS THE BLOCKER THAT THWARTS MANY
IDEA RESEARCH IS THE THREAT to your idea
Research has the ability to be very sexy and all the time you’re researching you feel like you’re really doing the work on your idea and building it out into something great and giving it legs to launch into the world…….but the reality is…..
You’re still just sat on a nice fluffy cloud someway up in the hemisphere bobbing around with your idea touching on this area of potential and that area of potential moving from cloud to cloud. It’s nice and its interesting but can hold your idea back from the gulf stream that’s hurtling along above your head and could really launch your idea into business.
Practical Action to turn your idea into business
The practical action you need to take to avoid this threat is to recognise when it’s happening and to time box your research and recognise that it has its value but it can only be of limited value – for an idea to get to business it needs REAL PRACTICAL WORK to build something and ship it into the hands of your customers. Once you have a product ‘out there’ then you’re riding the gulf stream – the insights you will get from the real world people out there that are using, interacting and handling your creation will catapult your ideas and business to a new level of success.
Bottom Line on Idea Research as a Threat to your Idea
The bottom line is to not let ‘research’ be an excuse for not doing the work to get your product into the hands of the people who matter. Business is simple…..but hard…and you have to do the work to achieve idea success.
Don’t you agree? Leave an answer in your comments to let me know and help others learn from your experience.
Richard
