In today’s world being an entrepreneur is not really about having
the best idea. It is actually about making that idea sell. We always have had a
perception that we should have “An Idea that can change your lives” but that isn't true. If that were true then we would have wanted to use Microsoft
Windows, been stuck on Orkut, used Yahoo for our searches and would have still been
buying Ford cars. The point here is very simple, whatever your idea is and no
matter how great or amazing it is, it needs to sell. If it doesn't sell then it
is just a waste.
There are two classes of ideas: Good Ideas and Bad Ideas. When you would listen to a good idea then you will always be like “Woah! Why didn't I think about this?” and bad ideas are like “Wait. That’s your idea?” All of us would know about Thomas Edison and we would consider him as one of the greatest inventors of his time and why not? He gave us the wondrous gift of the ‘light bulb’ and contributed to the ‘communication system’ but a fewer out of these who know Edison would know him as a brilliant businessman. All he did just like his friend Henry Ford was that he understood how to sell his product. Edison and Ford both used mass production and brilliant propaganda to work their way out into the market. This propaganda involved the “War of currents” in case of Edison where he actually convinced people to use DC current and to supply it rather than the general AC that we use. It gets a little sciency here but the fact is that to transmit DC over a short distance itself leads to such huge losses that could never have been recovered and still he had a following. That was a bad idea which worked but was short lived.
Why? Why would people follow Edison even when he’s wrong? Why Henry Ford is still considered a premier in the car industry while he was the one who supplied cars to both the Nazi’s and the United States? It is the image that he created for himself and the way he branded the cars. He sold that and it covered his tracks and contribution in the Nazi Holocaust and let him live and die as a legend. A legend he was, a legend he is.
Those were the old times, those were the times of monopoly but now? Now we have different people with different ideas hitting the wall which has been created by these giants and shaking them up. Generally whenever a big giant (today’s market leaders) see an idea, they buy it. The same way Edison did from Nikola Tesla and constructed his ‘General Electric’ on intellectual property rights and mass production.
In today’s world if you want your business to prosper it really doesn't matter much how or what is your idea because there is no good or bad idea. What matters is the way you sell
it, when you launch it and how well you keep it going. So, it’s not important to
be the first one but the one to make the difference. So, go out explore and
make a mark.
“It takes a thousand men to invent a
telegraph, or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a photograph, or a telephone
or any other important thing—and the last man gets the credit and we forget the
others. He added his little mite — that is all he
did. These object lessons should teach us that ninety-nine parts
of all things that proceed from the intellect are plagiarisms, pure and simple;
and the lesson ought to make us modest. But nothing can do that.” – Mark
Twain
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