How To Split An Atom

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There are two types of ideas in the world.

The first are those that let you do something entirely new. The airplane, the steam engine, the Internet. These enable new industries and drive the course of technology forward. The second are those that let you do something better. The 747, the Toyota Prius, Broadband. These take pre-existing platforms and push them in new directions. Sometimes the difference between a wildly successful product and one that falls flat on its face is in understanding which side of this coin you fall on.

Castles In The Sky

There is nothing wrong with building on a pre-existing idea.

You don’t have to be the “next big thing.”

Every idea doesn’t have to change the world as long as it’s changing something. A problem that many entrepreneur’s run into is that they focus on platform instead of product. Before they have a line of code written, they are thatching roofs on castles in the clouds, dreaming about how their product is going to change the course of human events. The result is that instead of building in stages, refining the idea, and making changes based on customer demand — they create a mish-mash of ideas and features all in the hopes that the market will understand the divine mandate that their product seeks to fulfill.

Never count on people to share your dreams.

Instead, take a step back and realize that while it’s entirely possible that your Social Network for Cat lovers will turn the pet food industry on its heels, you have no way of predicting that in advance. Even if you could, you don’t know what part of your product will resonate in the mind’s of your users. The only way that you can have any chance of getting this information is to strip your idea down to its civvies and show it to the world.

• Have a clear idea of what you want to do.
• Eliminate all those features that aren’t necessary to complete that goal.
• Test incessantly, seeing which parts of your idea were right and which were wrong.

On the flip side, if you know you’re curing Cancer or building the steam engine — understand that you’re playing an entirely different game. It’s a game where patience is your primary currency.

In these situations, your job as an entrepreneur is not only to create a product but also to create a need. Normal people wouldn’t care about the airplane without cheap, efficient commercial airlines. No one would care about a car that only got three miles to a gallon. If you’re building a product to be the next big thing, understand that you are building a culture as much as you are building something concrete.

You’re free to build anything that you want to, but if you’re going to be successful at it — you need to have some understanding of what you’re trying to achieve.

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