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Ideas are easy Implementation is hard: A beautiful quote by Guy Kawasaki – the author of >15 books, an American venture capitalist and one of the early brains in Apple. His successes also include being on the board of the Wikimedia Foundation of trustees. Most of his talks and inspiration are around innovation, the use of social media and entrepreneurship.

In today’s article, I want to talk about the meaning of his quote – ideas are easy and implementation is hard. We’ve heard similar quotes. Dhirubhai Ambani’s quote – Ideas are no one’s monopoly, think big think ahead. The world around us is changing fast and entrepreneurs and startups have made a huge difference in this world.

However, there is a common debate in the entrepreneurial world where founders are more passionate about the idea than the results it can produce. This article is about disputing, debating this thought and challenging ourselves. The story of great ideas producing great results is fantastic and even romantic, but is it real? I’d like to point you to the article – how to turn your business idea into a startup to assess this even further.

Ideas are easy Implementation is hard Meaning

Our brains are brilliant! They spin up ideas on a daily basis and most of these are immensely creative as well. But, there’s a slight difference between idea and innovation. The process of converting an idea into a valuable outcome is where entrepreneurs thrive the most.

Ultimately, the point of entrepreneurship and startup creation is in creating value. This value is based on the outcome and difference made to the end-user. If we’re not doing that, then we fail at the first step of entrepreneurship. In this sense, even idea creation is a waste of time because it is not tangible or only an intellectual exercise. A word of caution though – not all ideas are great. Some ideas must be ignored or avoided at all costs. Read more through – how to come up with a startup idea for intriguing discussions around it.

Why is Implementation of an idea hard?

An idea is only the starting point for an entrepreneur. It is more challenging to convert this idea into a viable business. In this section, we talk about why it is difficult to convert an idea into business. In order to increase your chances of success, you must assess the strength of your idea before beginning. This helps to weed out weak ideas or encourages you to work harder to make this idea stronger.

The most common and valuable steps in identifying the strength of an idea are:

Markets, customers and technology changes often

Ideas change with time because market demands are different. Product-Market fit is one of the most common reasons why startups fail. Ultimately even if you create the best product, the market might respond differently. Hence, even the most popular strategies recommend you to follow the test, try and fail approach. This helps you understand your customers, how they respond to the product/service at different stages before trying to scale it.

A business plan will be different from the reality

A business plan is the best way to theorize your idea further based on various factors such as viability, cost, timelines and financial projections. It gives you an indication whether your idea can give you results. Most investors expect this business plan to paint a picture of success and return on investment for them. However, past experiences have taught me that the business plan changes consistently. This change is not only important but essential for your idea to grow along with the demand

Ideas tend to glorify success and romanticise challenges

One last thing I’d like to mention in the menaing of – ideas are easy implementation is hard – most articles tend to glorify the startup journey. Problem is that most engagements try to tell us a story. This story gets romanticised with every iteration. Unfortuantely, it is glorified to such an extent that either perseverance or a mere idea are extolled as the sole cause of success. But as we all know, success needs a lot of things to work together. Simplicity might be the best form of sophistication. But simplification needs complexity to build a sensible solution.

How do you implement entrepreneurial ideas?

Here are some key steps to convert your idea into a business.

The most important factor for a startup founder is to ensure that the idea is practical and usable. This journey itself demands time, patience and constant learning. It is very rare for a product/service in a startup world to succeed in the first instance. Most founders learn and adapt from each experience. The problem with thinking that idea is everything – it takes away the important from the actual hard work of making something happen.

Some of the techniques below will help you test your idea and put it into action before taking risks.

Work on your business plan

The business plan will help you understand your thoughts better. Ideas in isolation will sound great most of the times. You need something more. As a founder, you cannnot get feedback before building a product. And you can’t build a product without investment. The best route you have is to create a business plan explaining your approach so that your idea can consider various possibilities before an investor can think about parting their money with you.

Define and build MVP before the prototype or product

I can’t stress this enough. An MVP is one of the best ways to reduce waste and identify what the user needs. As a founder, you ought to realise that an idea is just a hypotheses. The only way to test this hypothesis is through real results. An MVP indicates to the customer what your product/service will be about (How to build an MVP?). It helps you create a minimal product with least effort to see how valuable your solution will be. Remember, the most important factor of a startup is in creating value for the end user.

Talk to customers, get to the core problem

Always speak to customers – find out what their problems are. Be curious. It is very easy to start suggesting solutions that put off the customer. Instead, get to the root cause of the problem. Practice active listening and curiously identify why some problems are more important to customers than the others. This is the core practice of product management – identifying the most important problem to solve.

Test, iterate and learn

Finding a product-market fit is hard. Create a product, build something and test continuously. If you’re lucky to find a few early adopters, work with them to create value. At each iteration – think how useful this release will be for a customer. If you can’t justify the value – don’t release for the sake of releasing. Value is the single most important factor in balancing release cadences for your product.

Summary

Having said the above, I’ll still say that ideas are important. You can’t start with a rubbish idea and say that you’ll change the world because you can follow strategies better. Maybe you will be successful. But for a startup to have the best chance of success – start with a good idea, test it, validate the idea and release in multiple stages. Change, learn and change again till you get the solution right. Ultimately, it is all about value creation – not idea alone.

Ideas are easy Implementation is hard

Guy Kawasaki