“There are no original ideas. There are only original people.” – Barbara Grizzuti Harrison
A couple of weeks ago, I met with a passionate entrepreneur who pitched me an idea that he was working on for the past couple of months. He was in the “feedback” stage of his idea, which is when entrepreneurs tell everyone they know about their idea to hone down their pitch, and gather feedback to fill holes in their idea. As we talked about his idea, it resembled another idea that was already launched, which I briefly mentioned. Surprisingly, his enthusiasm went from being extremely excited to utterly disappointed within a couple of seconds. He couldn’t believe that another company was executing something similar to his idea.
At this stage, most entrepreneurs will dismiss their idea because they believe “it’s not original or innovative” enough if someone else is doing it. Most entrepreneurs fall into the trap of killing off their ideas way too early before exploring all of the possibilities that can lead to true innovation.
In poker, there are simple rules you can follow to put yourself ahead of 90% of other poker players. One of my favorite rules revolves around removing any attachment to the value of poker chips. When playing poker, the chips in front of you have absolutely no value, they’re just a medium for you to win chips from other poker players. Most players don’t play their A-game because they’re trying to “make the money” and don’t want to risk losing all their chips (which they end up losing anyways).
Last weekend, Rafe Furst told me a story about Dewey Tomko who is an amateur golfer and professional poker player. Dewey has issued a $1M challenge to any golf pro to a round of golf, which he usually wins for two main reasons. First, none of the professional golfers are used to betting $1M of their own money, so they succumb to the pressure of hitting clutch shots (they are too attached to the amount of money on the line). Secondly, Dewey doesn’t think about the $1M stakes as he’s become immune to attaching himself to the value of chips or bets. Framing the way you play poker with this simple rule can increase your odds of being successful.
I’ve followed a similar rule to frame creativity and innovation: For every idea you come up with, there are probably ten other people in the world executing that same idea.
Once you just embrace this rule, you won’t worry too much about what other people are doing. Just think of it as part of the process of being an entrepreneur. Look at Coke & Pepsi, which are almost identical products but both billion dollar companies. There’s no such thing as original ideas, only original people. Don’t fall into the trap of killing your idea off too early because it can change, morph, and turn into something truly amazing.
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1 uberVU - social comments // Apr 27, 2010 at 12:31 pm
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by mikekarnj: Check out my latest article/tip titled “original ideas don’t exist” http://bit.ly/aM3lcl...
2 Reema // Apr 27, 2010 at 1:32 pm
Great post. I feel that because there are no original ideas, many people are trying to just report an idea “first” as a means of claiming originality. I hope as marketers and critical thinkers alike, our interpretation of these ideas are executed thoughtfully, denoting originality which may lead to success. Thanks for this insightful piece!
3 Ryan Green // Apr 28, 2010 at 7:11 am
To me this speaks to the concept of First-Mover Advantage (see link below). Most people would choose to abandon their seemingly original ideas at the discovery of other like-minded would-be entrepreneurs. However this is a flawed approach as most people confuse the notion of being the first occupant in a market segment as being the first RELEVANT occupant in a market segment, a most critical differentiation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-mover_advantage
-RG
4 james Kelly // Apr 29, 2010 at 7:00 am
I want to agree with the latter part, original ideas are frightening, absurd and threaten people (possibly due to no frame of reference to which to relate them) but not a reason ever to kill them.
They are also risky (for the same reason above). I suspect that's why they are rare as I suspect an awful lot are self censored or strangled at birth by the multitudes of people/orgs who feel scared/alienated and threatened by the truly original for what it might mean.
5 Ross Hudgens // May 5, 2010 at 10:26 am
I liked this quote, taken from DHH from 37signals: ““An idea is so small part of a business that it’s almost a rounding error”. If you only have one competitor, you're OK. If you have 4,000, you aren't.
Something bigger to consider is what the barriers to entry are – even if you only have 1 competitor now, can 50 other companies do it comparably in five months if the idea blows us?
6 Michael Karnjanaprakorn // May 5, 2010 at 10:52 am
Ross,
Great quote! I'm going to have to steal that one : )
But yeah, I agree. I think with most ideas, they are almost replicable. If you look at Gowalla and Foursquare, they are almost identical in concept, but executed slightly different. One is taking off, and one isn't. You should know who your competitors are but I wouldn't worry too much about it.
7 JP // May 5, 2010 at 11:22 am
People often forget, where there is competition there is typically a market. Which is great!
8 Jenna Hoffman // May 5, 2010 at 11:42 am
To me original ideas do sometimes exist. It took a crazy Vegas Stripper to come up with the concept for http://www.dirtyphonrbook.com as just one example.
There are myriads of ways of organizing personal information and technologies to create new businesses.
I think that yes, there are sometimes some unique ideas in the world, it's just that execution is just so incredibly hard to do well.
9 Miki // May 5, 2010 at 12:24 pm
Ideas are easy. It's the execution of ideas that really separates the sheep from the goats.
– Sue Grafton
10 orignial name // May 5, 2010 at 2:54 pm
There are no original comments only retweets ….
11 Scott // May 6, 2010 at 12:25 am
I had this exact same idea for a blog post!
On the real though, I enjoyed reading this post. I don't agree that there are no original ideas, but I suspect that you don't either. The important part of your title/message is that the idea is less important than the execution of the idea, which ultimately will vary based on the person.
It's true that there are very few original ideas/concepts in the marketplace, not the world (very close to none), but there are those few brave and crazy souls who creep all the way out to the edge of reality and somehow have the stomach to stay out there. Tim Westergren of Pandora comes to mind.
James Kelly (commenter below) is completely right though that original ideas are frightening and often strangled at birth, because they are uncomfortably abstract, more difficult to prove, and riskier. It's an interesting phenomenon.
12 Senthil Kumar B // May 6, 2010 at 6:15 am
True fact…
13 Busting the Myth of Originality: Branding Basics | seo cloak // May 6, 2010 at 7:48 pm
[...] So here’s a concept: This thought is not original. [...]
14 Busting the Myth of Originality: Branding Basics | webmarketingexperts.com.au // May 6, 2010 at 11:53 pm
[...] So here’s a concept: This thought is not original. [...]
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