There’s a gaping chasm between figuring out what a solution to a problem would look like, and actually solving the problem.
Ideas, as the saying goes, are cheap. What’s really valuable is figuring out the strategy to actually fulfill the idea, and then following through on the execution. That’s where venture capitalists and entrepreneurs will tell you the real value is.
And they’re right – to a point.
It’s true that strategy and execution are hard work. It’s true that, without those things, any business is doomed to fail no matter how good the underlying ideas are.
But that doesn’t mean ideas are worthless, or that all ideas are created equal.
Because most people end up implementing the wrong ideas.
Most parents set out with the idea in mind to raise a creative critical thinker, capable of responding to whatever life throws at them. But most parents end up falling into habits and practices that encourage conformity, deferring to authority, and an expectation of easy answers.
Most entrepreneurs set out with the idea to build a business that matters, not one that just makes money. But of those who don’t fail completely, most founders end up shaping their culture, their investments, and their teams increasingly around what’s appealing to investors and others from the outside, rounding off all the interesting edges of what made them and their ideas unique in the first place.
Most regulators, legislators, and voters seek to shape a government which can do right by its citizens and leave them all better off. But once again, allegiance to what “looks right” to the outside, to a party line or a preference to “defeat the enemy” over all else; there’s no shortage of forces that twist and distort these original good intentions.
These things don’t happen due to a lack of intelligence, grit, or execution. They happen because the original founding ideas that seemed so pure and clear turned out to have been half-baked. And when push came to shove, it was simply easier to do the “normal” thing, the incentivized thing, the safe thing, than it was to do something as scary as confronting that weaknesses in your foundation.
I’m a parent, an entrepreneur, and a concerned citizen. I see a lot of things all around me that look like broken systems, flawed incentives, failures of coordination. I want to fix them.
But action is cheap. There are a million ways for me to “get involved” which are designed to help me feel proud of my impact regardless of the actual impact I have. I know 10+ pitches which could easily raise money; I have a myriad of lessons and morals I could draft for my kid.
Before I do any of those things, I want to actually give the idea phase its due.
This blog won’t be about implementation. It won’t even be about strategy. It’s just going to be taking a stark look at the systems, frameworks, norms, and behaviors all around us, and, before we start “fixing” them, asking – what would the most ideal version even look like in the first place?
