Brilliant ideas are worthless without rock solid execution

I just want to share with you something I’ve learned in the past few years, and that is without great implementation any brilliant idea is doomed to fail.

While the idea is very important, it is almost worthless without execution. A complete misunderstanding of this idea is presented to people like me quite often by marketing-minded people that keep saying: “I have this great idea, now I just need someone to make it happen”. They consider the hard part over, which for them is coming up with the idea.

Many smart people think this way, see a good idea as a “cash cow”, so they start their own company, start hiring people, start printing business cards with light bulbs on them and expect to make millions from coming up with great ideas, simply by thinking that less creative people would pay them for it. Nothing can be more wrong! The true sign of genius is not in coming up with an idea but rather in implementing it. Even the silliest idea that comes to fruition is still more valuable that something that exists only as a doodle on a piece of paper.

Implementing an idea is much (MUCH!) harder that coming up with it. It takes a lot of planning and hard work to execute one, no wonder why Edison said that genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. By being able to complete an idea, from concept to execution makes some people have a definite competitive advantage over many others.

Here’s a little example:

With this in mind we see that great ideas are crucial, but only when combined with great execution. Keep that in mind when you work on your next app, novel, script, invention. And good luck!