Here's Why Big Ideas Fail

As the year draws to a close, another New Year's Resolution is on the horizon.

But what about last year's resolution? 2017 was supposed to be the year that you launched that awesome, fantastic, amazing idea of yours.

Your mom loves it. Your friends love it. It's going to be the next billion-dollar company.

Here's why it big ideas usually don't work.

The reality is that ideas are a dime a dozen. There are 300 million-plus people in this country, 600 million-plus professionals around the world, and more than seven billion people on this planet. The chances that you've come up with the singular idea that's going to change the world are, well, one in a billion.

Most ideas don't fail because they're bad ideas. In fact, some very successful companies have grown out of bad ideas. Kevin Ryan, a legendary entrepreneur who's built several successful companies, including Business Insider, Gilt Groupe, and DoubleClick, says that Google started off as a "terrible idea."

"It was just a search engine. There already were seven," he said in an episode of the Radiate podcast.

So how did Google turn a "terrible idea" into a company now worth over half a trillion dollars?

Execution.

"Search engines at the time worked pretty well, but Google's worked better. And so over time you switched over, and it became very successful," Ryan said. Ten percent of the time, he continued, their search results were "fundamentally better. Ninety percent didn't change, but 10 percent did. And that was enough."

After college Philip Krim found himself in a co-working space and after awhile he began riffing on ideas with some other guys around him. "One of the ideas that we came up with was just solving how buying a mattress was the worst experience out there," he said on Radiate. Phil and his co-founders decided that they could execute this process better than others out there. Out of this simple learning, the multi-million dollar business, Casper, was born.

"We thought we could do it better."

The four-time founder Scott Kurnit agrees with emphasizing the execution of a business. The About.com founder is not phased by market rivals. "Sometimes they have been [done before], and you compete with the three or four or 10 other guys and you just execute well."

Knowing that execution is far more important than a great concept means that an entrepreneur has to spend far more time on things like building the right team. Having the right people around you is critical to the success of a company.

So remember this: Great ideas are only 1% of success. The other 99% is plain old hard work. Take that into the new year!

Please join me on Radiate, your “on-the-go executive coach!” We offer a snackable collection of videos featuring our expert CEOs to help solve problems, gain perspectives and learn new business skills. Now you can try us out for 1 month free!