Turning Ideas Into Impact: Innovation Can’t Happen Without Flawless Execution

Ideas, especially obvious ones, are worthless; every entrepreneur and geek knows that execution is everything. (Mark) Zuckerberg’s fellow Harvard drop-out Bill Gates didn’t invent crap, either, but he did execute. That’s business.”

 

Consultant, professor, and author Jeff Jarvis wrote those words in a post on his blog, not long after the movie The Social Network had been released. In context, Jarvis’ post had more to do with the movie’s interpretation of the founding of Facebook and why writer Aaron Sorkin got it wrong.

 

But as it relates to the OpenView Impact Funnel (which, if you’ve missed my last few posts, has been the focus of my own blog lately), Jarvis’ quote is a perfect starting point for a conversation about creating true innovation.

 

Now, I don’t agree that ideas are worthless (see my first post in this series). But I do think Jarvis makes a meaningful point: Ideas are just ideas. They don’t mean anything until you execute and turn them into something worthwhile.

 

With the founding of Facebook, the Winklevoss twins found that out the hard way. ConnectU might have been their “idea,” but Zuckerberg was the one that successfully executed it. And that’s an important lesson for expansion stage companies trying to develop innovative ideas that, ultimately, convert to massive long-term impact.

 

Going back the Impact Funnel I drew up late last year to illustrate this concept (click here to check it out), you’ll see that I’m a firm believer that innovation is a strategic, step-by-step process. It starts with establishing your goals (predictable and hopeful), brainstorming ideas that can help you achieve them, and experimenting to find out which of those ideas might actually work.

 

But it certainly doesn’t end there. How many entrepreneurs have come up with great ideas, only to see them fail because they didn’t know how to advance those concepts beyond the point of ideation and experimentation?

 

That’s why performing ad hoc execution is so critical.

 

Quite simply, innovation can’t happen without great execution. It validates value. And that validation, ultimately, can lead to a viable methodology that converts a new idea into predictable value and long-term impact.

 

I like the way that Nicole Chen, a Stanford graduate and former product designer, puts it in a post for Innovation Management:

 

There is a lot of talk within the innovation conversation about creativity, blue-sky thinking, and finding inspiration in unexpected places. But coming up with the ideas themselves is the easy part. The real challenge is execution. Turning an idea into an actual, real-life thing, whatever it is, is really, really hard, especially within corporations with numerous stakeholders, watchful investors, a plethora of conflicting political agendas, and the inevitable leadership egos that threaten the survival of a new disruptive idea.”

In other words, there’s a lot of grunt work involved in turning ideas into impact. And unless you’re able to balance ideas, intuition, experimentation, and execution evenly, true innovation is going to be hard to create.

 

One important point: OpenView’s Impact Funnel applies to all ideas. Not just the groundbreaking ones that tend to get the most attention.

 

For expansion stage software companies, those ideas could be as complex as a total shift in product strategy, or they could be as simple as publishing a new form of content that creates better engagement with customers and prospects. The bottom line is that the rules and steps that lead ideas down the path to predictable value and long-term impact apply across the board.

 

So, regardless of how earth-shattering or “been there, done that” your idea is, make sure you’re prepared to execute it better than anyone else in your market.