Stop worrying about your idea and start focusing on execution

By Rajesh Setty on Tue 08 Jul 2008, 6:20 AM – 5 Comments

Having lived in the Silicon Valley for more than a decade now, I get to hear ideas almost ALL the time – in various shapes, sizes and forms. Ideas, like most things in life, follow a normal distribution curve. Of the ones that I understand and can make a reasonable assessment, there are good ones, bad ones and most are average.

For whatever reason, there is a lot of emphasis on the “value” of the idea and less emphasis on the “value” of the execution of the idea. Actually, I can think of many reasons:

1. Coming up with ideas usually takes less time than actually executing on one of them.

2. If your idea fails at the idea stage, it is less painful.

3. You can talk about your idea as if you can easily execute it. But you can’t fake execution

4. You can change your ideas in a day but it is hard to change the execution course easily.

5. You can appear to be smart with more than one idea. Unless you are a chronic parallel entrepreneur, it’s hard to work on executing on more than one idea

6. Ideas are fun. You need a lot more brains and help to make execution fun.

7. You alone can support an idea. Rarely you alone can execute on the idea. You need a lot more help for executing on the idea.

8. Most often stakes are low for an idea. Stakes are high for almost all cases of execution.

One would think that people should be worried like crazy on executing on the idea. It is way more complex than painting a rosy picture through an idea. Unfortunately that is not the case. People are disproportionately worried about the idea. On a lighter note, some behave as if this is the last ever idea that will come to them. So they hold on to the idea with both their hands and by the time they act on it, it’s already too late (somebody else somewhere in the world has acted on it or technology has changed to make the idea irrelevant)

So, whatever is your idea – stop worrying about it and start focusing your energy on executing on it – if you are serious about executing on it, of course!

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Posted in the Business Models category.

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