Getting new ideas is easy. We have ideas all the time. Our brain just cannot stop thinking. Great ideas spread fast. Ideas are kind of like software: easy to scale, fast to copy, but it’s sometimes really, really hard to get it working in practice.
Acting on the idea it is the next step. Just get it done. Right.., but how, with whom and how much does it cost? If you are skilled and can do it yourself, just let me see some production. But when you do not have the resources (intellectual, physical or financial) your need to learn them and start building a team around your idea.
To get your stuff working there is perhaps a lot of research to do. What methods and technologies to use? What has been already done elsewhere? Has someone already patented your idea? Would there be a customer? Will anyone buy? What is the actual real benefit compared to existing solutions? Oh, so many questions and you need to learn them all if you want to make the world a better place with your product.
Exercising for growth
This means exercising with your personal growth on several levels. First you see yourself acting as an inventor, entrepreneur or a product champion (if you are employed by someone else). Then by thinking and analysis you start identifying productive ways to push forwards this idea. Possibilities are emerging from your choises and you can take them or leave those options just as you want. Each decision counts at the fuzzy front-end of new innovations, because there is no track to follow, but you are tracing it yourself. When facts become real obstacles you can start managing the situation, how to behave with potential customers and convince others that this is it – the next big thing – and they should join your project. And that is just the beginning, since while breakthrough as a word implies a sudden change of breaking through something, but actually you need to be banging that wall for a while before it happens as ”overnight” success.
Overnight success means a lot of sleeping
For a corporate example Netflix has been existing since the 1997. They started by selling DVDs, and it may be a surprise that even in 2018 the DVD business profit margins are fine – actually even higher than domestic streaming profits in the US. The company made 60 million profit in the last quarter of 2017 on DVD’s, and that money now can be invested to the fast growing streaming business. Not bad at all for a company that is in October 2018 consuming 15% of the worlds internet bandwidth. While Netflix is perceived as part of the high growth new digital business, and no 1. streaming company worldwide, 20 years after its founding they still have the first business model in place at the side.
Change does not happen overnight, but growth requires persistence over time. So, be proud of that idea you started with, but embrace the change. And for that purpose you need to continuously learn how to intitate and manage teams and organizations that can support the change and bang on to make the breakthrough.
Listen and learn
Let’s get back on the first thought: your idea. We think those personal thoughts are our own secret ideas, but actually others are thinking of similar things all the time. That is called culture. And when you talk with and they also share the idea. That is called a dialogue. One easy way to learn more about your idea is to listen to others.
Growth companies are often praised of their ability to scale business models, grow margins and get new customers. But in fact it is all about the personal growth of leaders running those companies, the personal growth of managers leading the projects and the personal growth of producers and experts who need learn new ways of working and new methods and technologies as the business changes.
As a founder or CEO of a new startup company, and actually it is the same for running a 20 years old company, it means that you have been reserved a front row seat in the movie. However, you are on not sitting down, but part of the story: standing, running and acting in it.
Getting your idea to work in practice and generating an impact requires a lot of personal growth and learning. We are given lessons in every-day discussions, meetings and phone conversations. If we keep our minds open and curious – we can bring ideas to life.