Ideas come from anything and everything but knowing what to do with those ideas is what hinders people from making one successful. So that question begs to be asked - “What should I do with my idea?”.
My suggestion? Nothing!
The problem people have (myself included) is talking to others about your idea. You get all excited and before you’ve thought everything through, you begin talking to people about your vision.
You’ll usually bring up the idea to people that could help make it happen but the problem is that you have no clue yourself. Instead, don’t say a word. Begin writing things down and taking time to get away or walk through issues in your head.
This does a few things - by spending time thinking through your idea(s), you begin to figure out how to make it all happen and who should really be involved. If it’s really a good idea - more will unfold and a bigger picture will come to light.
The second reason it’s important to do nothing is for the well known issue of human laziness. The simple act of telling people of an idea gives a rush of enjoyment and excitement that makes you feel you no longer need to do anything because you feel alive just talking about it.
Lastly (and possibly most important), if you begin talking about your idea before you’ve had time to do nothing about it - you’ll have no set of standards when discussing your idea with others. Someone else may not get your vision and tell you it won’t work or that it will work but you need to do “this” and/or “that” for it to be successful. At that very moment, you’re beginning to follow their vision and their idea [1].
So when you think you’ve got a new idea for something - do nothing. Sit on it, think through the issues and figure out what the idea means to you. Once you’ve had a chance to do this - you can begin doing something.
[1] This quite often results in the stealing of ideas.
posted on January 27, 2006 | 9:24 PM EST
Add to the discussion.
Talking about your idea to others right away also has the effect of killing it. People shoot you down with reasons why your idea sucks.
Often this can be a result of you not being able to articulate the idea well enough, because it’s new.
If you give yourself time to mull it over, you may find that your idea is bad. However, if it sticks with you, the idea is probably good enough to share. Plus, you have had time to think about it and can explain it much better.
But if the idea is compelling enough to you, you will follow it through despite negativity. The information people give you while shooting it down may be the very information you need to know to market the idea, or to make sure your idea handles that objection.
If it is interesting to someone else, it gives you early feedback as to whether someone might like the idea - like an early version of user testing.
I had an created a web page that assembled the same news my company pays a newsletter company to send out, but my boss didn’t want me to show it to marketing, because he doesn’t want the additional workload that our department might incur if we took back the responsibility. That just shows me that I need a way to create the system so that save human time, and be able to demonstrate that, and add a couple fringe benefits that put it over the edge.
Even if it doesn’t pan out, the time spent working out an idea, and the things learned in the process, may be pieces of something else down the line.
User testing can work but you can’t do it before you understand what you’re doing. In your work example, you had an extremely clear idea of what the site should do and the benifit it would bring. Showing it to your boss was only the next step after you spent your own time figuring it out.
As for seeing if the market is interested, you can do that sometimes but you still need to have a clear understanding of what you want to bring to the market, you can’t go to it with a half of a plan.
That said - the market has no idea what they want. Disney understands this and won’t do focus groups or user testing because the majority of things they come up with are so out of the box - people will tell them it won’t work because they have nothing to compare it to or can’t understand it because it’s not normal thinking. When they release their new idea, after doing nothing, they get rave reviews and continue to be the place of magic, wonder and excitement for all ages.
Also realize that doing nothing doesn’t have to last months. Some ideas are simple and you can think through all the issues on the car ride home.
Daniel Morrison Says:
Talking about your idea to others right away also has the effect of killing it. People shoot you down with reasons why your idea sucks.
Often this can be a result of you not being able to articulate the idea well enough, because it’s new.
If you give yourself time to mull it over, you may find that your idea is bad. However, if it sticks with you, the idea is probably good enough to share. Plus, you have had time to think about it and can explain it much better.