How to know if your idea is the next big thing
Sigma School
17th August 2023
The best ideas start when you are trying to solve a problem of your own, not somebody else's. Sometimes, when a problem seems big, it is really just a way of framing another problem that is really small.
Whenever I meet an entrepreneur, I ask them about their biggest success. I am always amazed by the answer. It usually isn't the company that was successful, but the idea itself. The founders of Google, for example, thought long and hard about the problem of how to search the Web. They didn't start Google because they thought search would be very profitable. Google was their big idea.
Ideas that change the world are surprisingly rare. Most of the ideas we think of as big changes—the electric light, the airplane, the computer—were not. Instead, they grew out of incremental improvements that solved tiny problems for lots of people.
The first airplane was a short, ungainly ship with a propeller on one side. It carried just one person, a frail man, and was designed to keep him from becoming sick. The first airplane was a great idea. It solved a problem for lots of people, and it changed the way people thought about the world.
It probably didn't look very different from the Wright Flyer of 1903, but that was just a lucky accident. The Wrights had been struggling for years with the same problem: the air was too thin for a man to fly. Then they made a discovery. They did better with their airplane when they started thinking like pilots. They made something that looked like a plane, but when it was a flying machine it was different, so much better.
The first airplane was a great idea, but it would not have gotten off the ground without incremental improvements. But it would never have happened if, instead of thinking about solving the problems that their customers had, the Wrights had been trying to discover the problem their customers would have.
You can't think of 'the next big thing' for yourself. You need different brains, and different experiences. You need to talk to your customers. You need to talk to investors, and to reporters. You need to be on the conference circuit.
You can't just sit around thinking, "What can be the next big thing?" You don't even know what it is until you talk to a lot of people about it.
But that's still not enough. You need another kind of conversation: one with yourself. You need to consider not only what customers need, but what your heart tells you. You need to find, in yourself, that spark of crazy passion that tells you, "This is it. This is the thing I can do better than anyone else."
Once you have that spark, you need to follow it. You have to follow it all the way. It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. Only you know if the idea will work. Only you know what it will take to get there.
When the time is right, you have to make it known. You need to take your idea public. And you need to keep talking about it, because while you are talking, people will be thinking. And they will be talking. And once they begin to talk to each other, you'll know.
And you'll know whether or not it's the next big thing.
And you'll know who your friends are.
And you'll know that you've found your tribe.
And you'll finally be one of them.
Peter Thiel's Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future, is a book of essays in which Thiel, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, writes about his experiences in starting and investing in companies. Thiel's book is full of insights, and educated guesses, about future technology.
Most of the book, however, is about how to think about ideas. Thiel's opening essay, "The Idea is King," is aimed directly at entrepreneurs who are thinking about starting a new company. Thiel's point is that companies that make incremental improvements on existing products are unlikely to succeed. Instead, the best new ventures are those "in which you [are] betting on something totally new."
Writing in the Harvard Business Review, James Allworth of Bain & Company pointed out how unusual Thiel's statement is. "Most entrepreneurs are risk averse," he said. "They want to invest in existing products, or companies that offer existing services, or products that can be easily copied. But Thiel argues that entrepreneurs should be more like venture capitalists, who look for ideas that they think have promise."
Thiel's argument is that ideas are like zero to one. A zero to one idea is a new invention. A one to zero idea is an improvement. A one percent improvement is an incremental improvement. An eighty percent improvement is a disruptive innovation.
Thiel's thesis is that ideas matter more in technology than in any other industry, including information technology. "In every industry," Thiel says, "the money flows to the things that people already want." But in technology, "the money flows to the things that people don’t know they want, but fundamentally improves people’s way of life and doing things. Thiel's thesis is that ideas matter more in technology than in any other industry, including information technology.
Email us directly at hello@sigmaschool.co!
Want to learn to find out more about what we do?
Learn more here: https://sigmaschool.co
Let’s get social! Find us on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/joinsigma/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joinsigma/
Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/company/79085028/
