Take note: A great idea is not enough for your start-up to succeed
Having a great idea isn’t everything. It takes work — not to mention guts, patience, dedication, and grit — to transform an idea into a viable business. Yet, founders can be blinded by excitement for ideas they’re passionate about. A common mistake of start-ups is adopting a way of thinking that says if you have a great idea, you have everything. Perhaps that’s one reason why only about one out of every 10 start-ups actually make it, while the other nine fail.
A few factors contribute to this harmful way of thinking. One factor is the ego. Too much confidence can cause founders to think that once they’ve put an idea on paper, they’ve created it. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. The paper is just the first step of a very long journey. Humility and the openness to learning every single day is the way that founders should approach the journey of bringing their ideas to life. And it is not easy to do that — not easy at all.
Excitement is a good thing to drive initial enthusiasm, but the action is what makes an idea real. Ideas and execution must be developed together. Take, for example, self-driving cars. The technology is extraordinary, but what are its practical implications? There are legal, ethical, environmental, and labour issues that have yet to be fully worked out. Each of these issues is part of the implementation and will determine the success of self-driving cars in the market overall.
And if we’re talking about cars, electric cars present an interesting case study in this very lesson. Better Place, which no longer exists, failed to mass produce electric cars because the company’s idea was better than its execution. It has been eclipsed in recognition — not to mention success — by strategy-savvy Tesla. And if you’ve read recent news, you know that transforming ideas into reality is not so easy for Tesla either. As it turns out, reality can be painful.
In order to avoid being part of the “good on paper” set, we must reorient our mindsets by following guidelines for successful strategic execution. A big piece of this is accountability. People who develop the big idea don’t always feel accountable for its execution. But when we lose accountability for execution, we can risk never getting an idea off the ground — no matter how good it is. Even the visionaries — the ones with extraordinary ideas — don’t always know how to turn their groundbreaking ideas into real products. If you are an entrepreneur, it is critical to realize that you are accountable for executing your idea. Your team is waiting to make big things happen, and they cannot do it without you.
I was fortunate to work in different sectors and positions, from the UN to a self-made entrepreneur, from a large enterprise to a one-man shop. In my experience, the best businesses are those that drive ideas to action and make sure that no part of the strategy is left for someone else to pick up. Today at Brightline, my main objective is to help leaders of companies, governments, and not-for-profit entities understand and reduce the common and expensive gap between strategy design and execution. Or, even better, help them shrink the gap between ideas and results.
Take it from me: if you don’t shrink that gap, your big idea isn’t going to happen. It is as simple as that.
