You don’t. You can research an idea but research is not reality. In almost every instance, things will happen that you don’t expect and sometimes what you expect won’t happen at all. You can call this luck, or just life, but the fact remains that you can’t really tell what will happen to something until it’s released into the wild. 

For instance, in 1939 a law student called Chester Carlson invented the process of xerography. The idea was patented in 1940 but didn’t reach the market until 1959, largely because everyone that saw the idea rejected it. It was an ugly little idea with no apparent market because carbon paper could be used to make copies of outgoing letters and correspondence.

But xerography soon changed into photocopying and the Xerox Corporation took off, flying into virtually every office in the world. Like INXS once said, we all have wings, but some of us don’t know why.

Sam Zell is an American billionaire of the 
self-made variety. He originally trained
as a lawyer but got into real estate
because it was more profitable. So why
is he buying the Tribune Group, the second
largest newspaper company in the US?
One reason is that Sam is the man when
it comes to spotting value in distressed
industries. Especially those that other
investors have overlooked. He buys and
then he Zells.

So when the world is zigging remember
to zag occasionally.

Each worker was asked to generate three small
ideas a year. This resulted in 14,000 new ideas,
11,000 of which were implemented.

Not bad.

Except that over in Japan Toyota’s employee
suggestion scheme generates 2,000,000 ideas
a year of which around 85% are implemented.

As we’ve said before, the best way to have a
good idea is to have carloads of them.

So unless there’s a company we do know and trust behind a new product or service it’s often a case of ‘better the devil you know’ until someone we know buys into the idea. Hence the importance of early adopters or ‘mavens’ as Seth Godin calls them.

One way around this innovation gridlock is to use brands, but an even better way is to use people. For example, when Stelios Haji-Ioannou was thinking of launching easyjet in the UK in 1995 he had two insights: first, people are more likely to trust a person than a company; and second, as a start-up he needed publicity but couldn’t afford it.

Solution? Combine the two and make the airline personal. Stelios is now a billionaire, his planes are bright orange and his competitors are green with envy.

A good example is Yellowtail wine. Casella Wines wanted to break in to the important US market but to do so had to first smash a few wine industry preconceptions.

First the wine market is complex. Casella decided to keep things simple by offering just one red and one white with no grape varieties and no vintages.

Secondly, people buy with their eyes so it was decided to use a label that was instantly recognisable. At first people said that putting an image of a rock wallaby was wrong – after all, who puts cute pictures of animals on bottled wines?

But it worked. So too did the name, which used lower case and brackets and looked a bit like email, which perhaps appealed to younger buyers.

As a result of this unconventional thinking, Yellow Tail grew from zero to over 7.5 million cases in the US in just five years and its Shiraz is now the #1 selling red wine in America. It’s enough to turn other Australian wine makers green with envy.

It took six years for the idea to
evolve, during which time experts
told him that it would be totally
impossible to produce steel that
was hard enough, thin enough and
cheap enough for a disposable blade.
But his instinct told him it was possible.

Then in 1901, one William Nickerson
decided to try and find a solution.
Two years later he succeeded and
the Gillette Company was born.

Close shave.

The idea is that all of us are always smarter
than some of us.

True. The problem though is that ideas
are not actions. It still needs an individual
to put a lonely hand up and drive
things forward.

Someone that listens to all the reasons why
something won’t work and then decides to
do it anyway.

Paul Cave opened Sydney
Bridge Climb after years of objections
about everything from climbers distracting
drivers to groups of drunks falling off.

Definitely someone that has walked the
walk – all the way to the top.

Make mistakes more often and make mistakes your friends. Unlike scientists, marketers do not deliberately try to prove themselves wrong. 

Instead, they tend to use historical evidence to prove that something will be right in the future. Big difference. 

Scientists, work on the basis that only through making mistakes can you disprove a hypothesis and that the more mistakes you make the faster you will get to something approximating the truth. Relevant example?

Google has stated that it will invest in projects that have a less than 10% chance of success. Why?

Because they honestly don’t know where some things will end up. They do, however, know that failing often and failing fast is one way to beat the competition.

For example, raise your glasses to Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay. Back in 1995 he had the idea of creating an online auction site. Legend has it that the idea was inspired by Omidyar’s girlfriend, Pam Wesley, who was looking for a way of trading her PEZ sweet dispensers. 

Whatever the inspiration, Pierre created a site called Auctionweb without giving much thought what to do with it. People prophesied that the site wouldn’t work because strangers wouldn’t give money to each other.

They were almost right too. In 1998, 8% of the items on eBay were Beanie Babies. However, Pierre stuck with the idea and by 2006 revenue had hit US $6 billion with eBay adding approximately 6 million auction items every day.

Sweet.