Your Great Ideas Don’t Matter

600px-Apple_Newton_and_iPhone 

Your great ideas don't matter – unless you are able to execute them well.

I've seen great, brilliant ideas that conceptually were outstanding. But they were executed poorly and failed.

Take Apple for instance. The Newton. It was light years ahead of it's time. A great idea if ever there was one. But technology and the market wasn't really ready. It failed. The PDA platform hadn't been invented. Their category killer for which they are now famous for had no category to kill.

They have learnt from that mistake. They've had a over-hyped Tablet in development for some years. But have felt that the market and the product wasn't quite ready. Given the iPhone success they feel the market is ready and they obviously feel like their idea is right.

Do you have a killer idea? Is your target market ready for it? Do you have the resources and the talent to execute it well?

Footnote: All was not lost with Apple's Newton. The team that developed the software for it set up their own business which developed the software for the iPod.

Props to Douglas Karr for his blog.

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Photo: Blake Patterson.

1 comment

  1. My view on this post:
    My great ideas matter because they are not aimed at being commercialised. That’s why the Apple’s Newton failed.
    Do you have a killer idea?
    As an artist I constantly have ideas and they are all killers ideas! They are all written down and ready to be made real.
    Is your target market ready for it?
    In artist’s terms I do not think of my target market. I do my art and hope someone will like it. I don’t sell my art.
    Do you have the resources and the talent to execute it well?
    It is good to ask ourselves these questions. Artists and producers need to count what they have, material or virtual stuff and skilled labor. Labor including ourselves and what we are capable of or not. There are very few one man show’s these days, it is often all about a team’s work.
    In summary, I do my art first, then might evaluate if the target market is coming to light. I keep commercialization in the back of my mind but for the real advancement of ideas, I believe creativity should not be intertwined with the desire to make money out of the idea.
    Geneviève Gilbert

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