Success in business.
Polish Your Ideas For Greater Success In Business
There’s no such thing as a bad idea, some just need more work than others.
Innovation in business is the core driver of sustained competitive advantage over time and innovation is necessary for continued success in business. The pointy end of any business innovation framework is the ability to capture and sort ideas for improvement and disruption. The best innovators develop systems to ensure every idea has a chance to show it’s true potential and this comes down to how they treat ideas that arise.
Did you know that you can polish a turd? It was proven true in episode 113 of MythBusters.
The notion that even a turd can be turned into something beautiful is immensely powerful. It implies that it’s not always the substrate that determines a successful outcome, but the process and technique used to shape it.
This notion also gives weight to the adage that no idea is a bad idea, no matter how terrible it might seem at first. Or put another way, there’s no way to know the true worth of an idea until you’ve had a chance to try and ‘polish’ it.
When presented with an ‘interesting’ idea, instead of dismissing it outright, it’s always worth taking a little time to understand what it’s true value might be. Pull it apart, work it around, poke holes in it, and generally interrogate it for its underlying value.
In doing so you will typically end up with three scenarios.
1) The original ideas being validated as a good idea.
2) The original idea looking different but more valuable.
3) All parties satisfied that the idea is not worth pursuing.
Adopting a mindset that gives every idea a chance will quickly gear an organization towards validating all potentially useful innovation concepts by habit. No idea is dismissed until it has had a chance to be considered and every good idea, by default, therefore has the chance to realize its full potential.
By not engaging in such behavior, founders are doing themselves a disservice. They run the risk of only doing what seems easy or standard, limiting their potential to be original and truly innovate.
It’s true that there will always be sh*t ideas, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be valuable. Being mindful not to dismiss these ideas too early is important as sometimes they just need a little time and patience to get right.
Your new motto — “Let’s see if this sh*t is polish-able”
About the Author
AIDAN KENEALY (BCom BSc MInstD)- Founder Hole In One Ventures
In 2013, Aidan founded EMGN.com, which would go on to become New Zealand’s fastest growing and largest entertainment website.
EMGN sought to provide a mental vacation for anyone, anywhere, at anytime by producing and distributing ‘mind candy’; entertainment content consumed via a mobile website. They believed that providing people with micro breaks during their day would improve the productivity for their audience, and this is what they leveraged to grow.
EMGN’s growth was unique. Within its first year, EMGN was a global, multi-million dollar business. It’s traffic volume ranked it within the Top 10 US mobile websites and the top 500 global sites on the Alexa.com rankings. That growth continued both exponential and profitably for three more years without the need to raise any external capital.
This is what makes Aidans’ experience very different from the ‘norm’ in the world of start up. Aidan took a practical and scientific approach to all aspects of the business and it was this approach that led to an innovative company, high growth startup.
Following the successful exit of EMGN.com in 2017, Aidan launched Hole In One Ventures to provide both capital and realistic advice to founders of high growth businesses looking to take their ventures to the world.
Hole In One Ventures
Hole In One Ventures was launched as an angel investment fund in 2017 by founder Aidan Kenealy. It’s mission was to invest in pre-seed & seed stage businesses and to partner with the founders early in the development of the business.
In a response to a somewhat immature local startup ecosystem, Hole In One Ventures has since evolved its mission to helping founders realise their vision for success. We achieve this by helping founders be better than yesterday, everyday through offering a range of professional coaching and advisory services tailored to startup founders.
We now work with founders from all around the world as their coach, mentor and/or adviser, in what is becoming a rapidly growing international venture.
It’s our aim to bridge the gap between the angle investment and professional startup coaching and advisory spaces. By taking a founder-centric approach, and making our business about the success of the founder and their business, we see this as a better path for mutual success.
