People are so creative.
I’d be willing to bet that everyone in America has at least one clever idea in their hip pocket that they wish they could take to market. Ideas come in all sizes.
Maybe your idea is the next big thing; will create new industries and generate great wealth. Maybe the idea is a simple gadget to make a task of daily living just a bit easier. Or maybe it’s something flat out cool that trendy people just won’t be able to live without.
Come on now, admit it… you have an idea too, and you’d love to see it in the marketplace. That’s great. But you need to realize that regardless of the potential of the idea, it’s worthless if you’re not willing to advance it by putting in the hard work necessary to move the idea to an innovation. An innovation, by my definition, is an idea that has made it to market and generates profitable sales. If you do nothing, the idea will do nothing. And before you know it, a similar product will hit the market and you’ll end up telling your friends how you had the very same idea. Woulda’, coulda’, shoulda’… but you didn’t.
The key to success is you.
It’s your idea, so you need to make it happen. Don’t expect your techie buddy to spend weekends in the garage working on a prototype of your idea. Don’t count on your rich relative investing in your back-of-the-envelope flow chart for a new app. Don’t expect your boss to change the direction of the company because of a conversation in the elevator.
Yes, all these things can happen, and it doesn’t hurt for you try them out… just don’t expect them to succeed. You can’t expect other people to see your vision, invest money, and work hard while you sit and watch them make you a success.
Since I design and build proof-of-principle prototypes for a living, about once a week I am contacted by someone who has a truly wonderful idea that they’d like me to turn into a reality. You would be surprised how many people sign an NDA, tell me their idea, and then award me significant equity in the idea. My job then is to take their abstract hardware or software idea and turn it into a working reality. That’s what I am good at, and I love doing it. So, it sounds sweet doesn’t it? I just do what I love doing and I have ownership in a super idea. But wait, it’s usually not so sweet.
Quite often a person with a clever but vague concept, expects me to invent a practical solution, fund the prototype development, manufacture the product and take it to market. It is their idea, but they want me to invest my time and money, take all of the risk and do all of the work. Not gonna’ happen. It doesn’t matter how good the idea seems or how much fun it would be to build the prototype, I won’t be involved if the originator of the idea just sits and watches.
If it is your idea, you’ve got to take the lead.
Roll up your sleeves.
Since it is primarily up to you to make your own idea a reality, having ideas are actually a burden if you are determined to take them to market. Most successful innovations require a person to be persistent and expend lot of time and energy. As Edison said, “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”
But don’t let some hard work stop you. Pull on those overalls, roll up those sleeves and get to it. Not only will you advance your idea, but if you are pulling out all stops and busting it, it is more likely that others will be more interested in helping you. It has certainly been an influence on me.
A year or so ago an inventor stopped by my lab with an elaborate wind turbine prototype constructed out of old CDs, plastic soda bottles and other found items. It was clear from the contraption how much thought and work he put into his idea. He had no money, but he did his homework. Beyond just the demonstration prototype he had information on competing designs and strong arguments as to why his design was an improvement over the state of the art. Truthfully, I don’t know much about wind energy, but this hard working guy I wanted to help!
So we obtained a small amount of grant funding from a foundation that was interested in helping budding entrepreneurs build prototypes. Then we visited Villanova University’s College of Engineering, carved out some time in their high tech wind tunnel and convinced a team of top notch Villanova engineering students to investigate and improve upon the idea as part of a senior design project.
The invention is still a work in progress, but we now have a well-designed professional-looking working model crested on Villanova’s 3D printer and we’ve characterized the system in the wind tunnel. So now we have a good chance of attracting major investment. All of this because the inventor demonstrated that he was passionate enough about the idea to put in his own hard work. Oh, and I don’t think I mentioned it, but he doesn’t speak English. However, with a basic prototype built, and some calculations he was able to convince me and several others to help.
Other poor excuses: No time, no skill, no money, no connections.
Aside from the hard work, what are other reasons people don’t move on their great ideas? The reasons I’ve heard include: not having the time, not having the skills, not having the money and not having the connections. In my next posts I’ll tell you how to eliminate each of those barriers—so you won’t have any excuses, you’ll just have to be a success.
Edmond J. Dougherty is an Assistant Professor and Director of Engineering Entrepreneurship at Villanova University’s College of Engineering. He is also a successful entrepreneur and inventor of 13 US patents, as well as president of Ablaze Development Corp, a company which provides electronic and software product design services for government and industry.
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