The nine students who are a part of Seth Godin‘s Alternative MBA Program, were tasked with coming up with 111 business ideas each. Fortunately for us, they posted them for all to pluck from.
I love to think of new things: business ideas, process improvements, enhancement to products and services, pretty much anything is up for ideation. This list puts things into perspective for me.
Ideas really are cheap.
In fact, they’re being given away. So, the true power of an idea must be in it’s execution. This challenges me in two ways:
- Keep my focus on the idea(s) that I’m truly passionate about executing
- Give away the rest (Check out this page for a list of my own ideas—feel free to take them)
Malcolm Gladwell says in his new book Outliers that it takes 10,000 hours to master a skill. In business, we could say that it takes 10,000 hours to become a success. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t?
The problem with my generation is that we’ve been spoiled by the dotcom successes. Somebody will launch an idea, like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, you name it, and within a short amount of time (1-3 years), they’re being offered millions of dollar$ to take it to the next level and a valuation of hundreds of $Millions. If I was honest, I expect that to happen to me too, but these successes are exceptions, not the norm.
Moving forward, I challenge all ideators, and myself, to ask and commit to the following question,
What idea are you willing to put 10,000 hours into?
If you can answer that question before you start hour-one, then I think you have an idea that’s worth pursuing.
