How Will Your Idea Die?

Ideas need love. Big ideas need a lot of love. When a big idea is born, it’s not fully-formed - it’s not ready for the world. Or, the world may not be ready for the idea. The idea needs to be developed in concept and in form. And the idea will need a healthy ecosystem of support to grow.

When a big idea is new, it’s vulnerable. In fact, chances are that the big idea will die. It will get killed. Murdered. Eliminated. Suffocated. Starved. There are so many ways that a big new idea may find its own premature end.?

Today, we'll talk about some of the most lethal idea killers, and how to help your Big New Idea survive.

Here are just a few of the ways your idea will die. Sorry.

How will you fend and fight for your big idea? You must come to know the world of The Deadly Norm, and how it eats up Little Big Ideas just like yours every day. Here are 5 ways that your big idea will die. Knowledge is power, you know. When you come to understand the wide world where your idea must grow, you can know how to nurture, protect, and feed your idea what it needs to survive.

Why Your Idea Will Die #1: You Don’t Speak the Language

If you’re an idea-haver, you already know how hard it is to put a big new idea into simple words. Meanwhile, a big new idea seems to constantly seek open space - and each utterance you give the idea flows uncontrollably from your lips and fingertips like an unstoppable flood. What are we to do with this content? We need to find a safe place for it - and that doesn’t necessarily mean?secrecy. Your idea needs support and development. But, first, we need to gain an understanding of the local customs of the environment.

Any time you walk into The Room - any room where you might share your idea - you need to understand what holds meaning for the people in the room, and how they communicate. Whether or not you know it, your idea probably disrupts The Norm - and chances are, it will disrupt people in The Room.?

Your idea might be a powerful pain killer for customers. You big new idea might be able to create massive gains for your company. Most big ideas create value by solving big problems. Big ideas reinvent how we do things and even how we experience life.?

As you enter The Room, you must understand how entrenched The Norm is in there - and what’s meaningful to your potential supporters. Start your path of understanding by digging into the architecture of your idea, and how it will disrupt The Norm of your situation. What problem does the big idea solve? Whose problem are you solving? Does the problem you are solving “belong” to another person or group? How does The Norm prefer to solve problems? What does The Norm value, above all else? Does The Norm believe your pain-killer or gain-creator to be important? Are you solving a problem that The Norm cares about?

When you’re evaluating the environment you need to support and develop your idea, adopt a brutally honest perspective. Don’t answer your questions by copping the publicly posted values and virtues of the environment. Ask people. Directly. And then ask again for clarification. You’re not afraid of bad news. You’re exploring the ecosystem and you need to know the truth about what’s important and how problems are solved - and how ideas can grow. The survival of your big new idea relies on this.?

Take a look at the answers to the questions of your ecosystem expeditionary efforts. Some organizations and idea environments are all about execution and delivery. In fact, many cultures appear to champion the act of optimization of production or the means of engineering over the act of looking at higher-order problems or situations. In order to speak the language of the ecosystem, we must understand what is valued. Maybe it’s growth. Maybe it’s average purchase value. Maybe it’s cost of acquisition. Maybe the ecosystem you’re working in really values bottom line improvements and cost savings.?

What measure will be used to evaluate your idea? What will The Norm value? Does The Norm want high-flying adventurous risk-taking with your big new idea? Or does The Norm want a well-manicured, carefully-measured, well-engineered idea? Now, no matter the answer to these questions, it doesn’t change your idea. It just helps you understand The Language.?

Your idea will survive if you can learn to present your thinking in The Language and Customs of your ecosystem. Being clear about the problem being solved and how this will benefit the ecosystem is important. What’s perhaps more important is to demonstrate the value of your big idea within the value system of the ecosystem. It shouldn’t change the idea - but, ideas often need to be translated for early on.

The Ecosystem and The Norm may kill your idea if your idea’s situation, problem, solution, or vision require too much translation or too much effort on the part of the Ecosystem. Ecosystems want to balance and conserve resources. If it’s not immediately obvious that your idea will make The Ecosystem better and stronger - if your idea looks like a threat to The Norm, your idea will likely be killed.?

Why Your Idea Will Die #2: Your Idea Story Is More About HOW Than WHY

We all experience Big New Ideas differently. Some of us might envision ourselves using a new technology, and design the idea from that perspective. Some of us might see the solution from the inside, and utilize a specific approach to engineering and building to express the idea. Some ideas occur to us as headlines of news coverage as a vision of an outcome created by the new idea.

When you talk about your idea, are you talking about the end result of the idea, should it come into the world in its most perfect form, and change life as we know it? Or, do you find yourself predominantly talking about HOW you will make the idea work?

In my experience, a powerful big idea story features a big problem or threat or challenge to overcome. The story is about the pursuit of a solution to the problems, and the evolutionary dance between the problem and solution.?A Big Idea doesn’t just return the world to how it was before the problem arose - big ideas transform stuff. The vision is the imagined ideal or intended state of the world that the big idea aims to will into existence.

A Big New Idea demands to be figured out. It’s not just about vision of the future. It’s a focus on which problem to solve - and there are always many. Every notice that in great stories, a problem arises during some sort of quest or mission, and we spend the balance of the story not only solving that initial problem - but, all of the issues that arise along the way? If you expect the ecosystem to rise up to support your idea, you will need to communicate the situation and problem, the vision, and how you intend to bring about that vision.

When your idea is just an idea, it’s most important to be very clear about the situation, the conflict, and the vision of your story. You haven’t solved the problem yet. You have ideas - but, the story is just beginning. By basing the idea’s story in the WHY, your very early supporters can help you understand how your idea’s vision aligns with the surrounding ecosystem. When you’re raising a big new idea, you’ll find there is no shortage of problems along the way towards the vision. The HOW will surely evolve - and your supporters and teammates will expect that.?

Don’t get me wrong. You will need to have plenty of HOW along the way to building your idea into reality. That’s the real stuff, there. But, when you’re working to find a supportive ecosystem for your idea, you need to lead with the WHY.

The Norm will kill ideas because the HOW seems difficult and complex. The Norm will kill new ideas because they disagree with the early version of the HOW. Ecosystems may reject new ideas that seem like they’d require a lot of resources and attention. If your idea’s story is about the HOW, the Ecosystem may reject it before you even get started.

Why Your Idea Will Die #3: You’ve Got Bad Connections

Most Ecosystems and their Norms resist Big New Ideas. At first. For this reason - and many other reasons, time and attention for new ideas is very limited. Big ideas are big and take up a lot of space if we’re not careful. Our job as idea havers is to take care of that new idea while we develop it and build support. The HOW of Big New Ideas is usually in flux and rangy - that’s OK for now. The HOW can formulate the ANSWERS to the question of How during conversation - but, we must lead with the WHY and VISION for our Big New Idea - and these must be simple.

If you have a clear and simple WHY for your Big New Idea, you should be able to describe the idea’s situation, conflict, problem choice, solution and vision all within a couple of minutes. With a bit of practice, you should be able to get a version of the story out in 30 seconds to a minute. The elusive elevator pitch is important. It will take practice. This approach will require you to develop short, simple, speakable sentences to communicate your vision - your intended outcome.?

The purpose of this ultra-simplified language isn’t just to blurt it out quickly. Rather, the reason it’s simplified lies in its ability to inspire discussion and questions. If you’ve been working on your idea for a while, you have probably generated a lot of information. The secret to caring for a very large idea early in the process is your ability to showcase your problem-solving and thinking in a very simple and clear way, while operating in a non-linear experience of conversation with others. What about all of that other information??

The massive amount of information exists as a series of supports and connections in your story. Some detailed information stays beneath the surface of an elevator pitch, but is standing by to show your thinking if there’s a question about a high-flying aspect of your vision. For instance, you might have fielded a survey and studied 3rd part data to understand the needs of the target audience for your idea - but, the audience insights may not be necessary in a very short elevator ride. But, if questions arise about “who is this for?” and “why will people use it?” or “will people get this?” you have that information connected to your story to support it.?

As you develop your story, practice building up information and check for relevant connections between your insights and the solution. How does the audience research you did support the your choice of problems to solve or the solution? How did your market sizing exercise validate the value of the idea??

Your idea will be killed if you to explain everything about your idea in a linear stream of consciousness. Your idea will probably be killed if the problem you’re trying to solve doesn’t seem important or valuable. Your idea will have a hard time surviving if you’re unable to have rich, two-way conversations about the situation, the problem, insights you’ve uncovered, your solution idea, and the intended outcome.?

The Room must feel like there’s a reason for them to be involved in your Big New Idea. People need to be needed for more than their support. People want to lend their expertise. And so presenting your idea as an airtight case might be appropriate in later stages of do-or-die, one-shot type presentations - but, when you’re developing it, you need to create an environment that’s information-rich, open, and, frankly, vulnerable.?

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Why Your Idea Will Die #4: You’re Asking For The Wrong Support

Caring for Big New Ideas is a process. At each step in the process, you need support. In each conversation, you’re asking for some form of support. Early on, you need help defining the rules for ideas. You need background data. You need help defining the situation and problem scope. Until you’ve got clarity and brevity for your story, this is the appropriate amount of support to ask for.?

Early on, you’re looking for alignment between your idea and the potential ecosystem for idea growth. Maybe some early conversations help build support for your idea, and you grow your team of intrepid big new idea havers. You might find yourself building a loose-knit team of contributors and folks that want to be in the loop. Early on, you’re just looking to establish a basis for action. You will establish this basis through inviting others along for the ride with you and your big new idea. This means fielding lots and lots of questions. And asking lots of questions. You’re just looking for answers. Truth. The lay of the land.?

As you build support for your idea - in both supporters and in story - you need to build up content to entertain conversations. When you’re in Story Assembly mode, you need to avoid presenting the idea and any plan as a perfectly-manicured, sewed-up, airtight linear narrative. When you’re assembling the story, you’re need data. You need background. And then you need refinement on the story. You do not need an all-or-nothing pitch together at this point - and presenting a linear end-to-end case doesn’t often invite collaboration or conversation. When you’re still assembling the story, the idea will grow and evolve, hopefully. The idea grows into the ecosystem - and the ecosystem rises to support it, ideally. Remember, when you are the idea-haver, you are not the idea. The idea is not you. You’re just taking care of it - and hopefully releasing it into an environment where the idea will grow.?

When you’ve got a clear, brief conversation about the idea available, and you’ve built up a baseline of support from within the ecosystem via conversation, you’re ready to ask for the kind of support that will typically raise eyebrows from within The Ecosystem and The Norm: you need resources. If you’ve build a basis for action, and you’ve developed a strategy and a solution, you might need product, delivery, or engineering resources to help build the plan. Without the plan, you won’t know the order of magnitude of resources you might need to build the big idea.?

If you’re building the idea, you only need support enough to properly define the idea - including the selection of the problem, development of a strategy, and a vision of the intended outcome. With this in-hand, you can start building support with folks who want and need to work on the HOW of the idea. What will it take to make the idea? What kinds of resources? How long will it take? Asking for resources, funding, people, teams, and time doesn’t mean you change your approach to having conversations. You still need to invite collaboration on the idea. You still need to build alignment on the problem before you dive into the depiction of the idea. You still need questions and conversation.?

The Ecosystem will kill your idea when you’re asking for support if you haven’t built up proper connections between the validity and scope of the problem. Your idea will die if you start asking for resources but you don’t have a solid business case in place for discussing how the resources and time you’re asking for will appreciate in value - in the form of pain-killing, gain-creation - whatever the value system of your ecosystem might be. The Norm will kill your idea if you haven’t positioned the big idea as being healthy and useful to the Ecosystem, within the values of the Ecosystem.?

Storymaking around a Big New Idea requires deliberate, intentional approaches to asking for only the resources you need to proceed to the next step - even if the big new idea is massively adventurous and world-changing. And who knows? Sometimes building a story about a big new idea shows you that the idea needs a different ecosystem to thrive.?

Why Your Idea Will Die #5: Your Idea Has Little or Nothing to Do with Anyone Else’s Plight

There are forces at play around every Big New Idea that we cannot control - and our ability to host a big idea in our lives is often a practice in the power of will.?

One of the forces at work is The Room. If you can muster the courage to show and tell others about your idea in the very early stages, you can build stronger ideas. With others. This might mean you share the resulting idea. This might mean that the idea changes. All that is fine. The important part is the growth of your confidence in your thoughts - in the form of short, simple, speakable phrases and sentences. As you play with the force of The Room, you may discover critical information about how you might be able to execute the idea. The Room only wants what the people in the room want. What do the people in the room want? Depends on who they are and what drives them.

For a very long time, I thought that people should do the right thing. They should choose to support the best, most creative, best thought-out ideas they can find. As it turns out, very few job descriptions say that. The Room is for you to build. You must expose your idea to thoughts outside your bubble - ideally, in an effort to grow the idea in an environment that will support it. The Room represents a sub-set of drives from around your organization. What is the plight of the people in The Room? Some peoples’ plight is to lower costs. Some people need the machine that is the company and the ecosystem to avoid disturbances. Some people want efficiency. Some people want spectacle. Some people are driven by growth - in the organization and within themselves.?

When you’re very early in your process, please look deeply into the plight of each potential supporter. Does your idea support their plight? If so, chances are, they’ll support at least the pursuit of solving the problem you’ve set out to solve. Maybe The Room can’t tell if your idea supports their plight. Maybe you don’t know - and that’s what you want to avoid: flying blindly, continuing to invest energy and love into an idea without ensuring that you’ve aligned the idea with The Ecosystem that will support it.?

The Norm is the force that arises from every ecosystem that is the sum average of drives in that ecosystem. The Norm takes on its own identity many times - exerting a kind of inertia around an organization, avoiding disruption, and maintaining - yep, normalcy. While your idea may not need to satisfy The Norm, you must contend with the forces of The Norm.

The Ecosystem is the map of transit of all resources in an organization. It is the economy and it is the market of markets. Ultimately, understanding The Ecosystem means intimately understanding The Business of Our Business; if your organization generates revenue by selling advertising impressions, then you must come to terms with building the new big idea around the market of attention - the backbone of advertising. If your native ecosystem is engineering-led and thrives on optimization, you better figure out how your highly creative perspective will increase the value of those optimizations in engineering. Similarly, you haven’t really designed an idea completely if you don’t completely understand who will use it, why they will love it, what problems it solves for them, what job it does for them, how it removes pain from their life, or how it creates a gainful experience for them.

The Idea needs a Plight to serve. The Idea only has the power that need and desire can provide it. Your idea will die if you resist the need to serve the plight of your organization, your client’s organization, or your customer’s plight - their needs and wants. Your idea may die. Most ideas die. But I also find that these big ideas often come to life in the minds of many people around the Earth at once - and even when an idea has died in one ecosystem, the same idea might be thriving in the minds and hearts of another, more suitable ecosystem.?And sometimes everyone who’s supposed to be involved in the idea meets somehow.?

You know, life finds a way, and stuff. Keep searching and keep conversing.

Hey. If you're into this art. You can look at all of the prompts and works in progress via Midjourney.

Note to Reader: Not to wax too meta - but, you may notice that this article is, in fact, the idea development process at work. I've created a masterclass on how to pitch big ideas, and this page is an example of "trying on" an idea for how to package up the very large product I've created. So, make a sandwich, pack a lunch or whatever you need. I need an editor. Or not. I think the funny pictures break it up.