Ideas are cheap

...and editors essential.

The other day I had another idea for a business. I could quickly sketch the services it would provide, to whom, to what end, the many partnerships that could help build it, how it might scale and make money. The only problem: I think it could work, but I don’t want to run it.

Ideas are the single cheapest part of innovation. That means they’re easy to kill early, saving money, time and attention. But I’m struck by how hard individuals and organizations find it to eliminate new initiatives. Time, money, meetings, are exhausting, exhaustive and expensive and I’ve seen ideas stagger on not because anyone loves them but because nobody wants to say no. Those new to entrepreneurship can be very protective and precious about their ideas. Frequently fearful of sharing them, they may invest months of work before getting the instantaneous feedback they might have got early for free. And they almost never take the imaginative step, asking: if it did work, is this what I want to be doing with my life? Does the world need my idea?

The best heuristic I’ve ever come across to get rid of ideas quickly came from a visit to W.L.Gore, a company famous for the immense breadth of its innovation and the depth of its their employees’ ingenuity. Gore requires that, to be considered, any proposal pass three tests:

1. Is it real? In other words, does it deliver a tangible, measurable benefit?

2. Does it matter? If successful, would the resulting product make a significant difference to the core business? Forget marginal gains.

3. Can we win? If it requires entering a new market, do we face dominant, entrenched competitors (in which case we could easily fail) or is the market loose and disaggregated (in which case we could triumph)?

That it is just three questions makes them easy to remember. So any bright idea that the brilliant people at Gore come up with can be tested easily and quickly and the duds killed off fast. On the other hand, if the concept passes all those tests, it’s worth investing time and effort. So go ahead: call a meeting.

And that’s the fourth test, perhaps my favourite test of all time: Anyone can call a meeting, but nobody has to come. In the context of innovation, that could mean that if nobody likes the idea (or, frankly, if nobody likes working with you) then it fails at the fourth post. But if you pass all four, chances are you’re onto something.

I think my latest business idea would pass the first three tests. But it wouldn’t pass the fourth. If I called the meeting, I wouldn’t come. If it’s a truly great idea,it deserves someone who loves it, and I don’t. I might have leapt at it years ago, but now there are other things I want to do. If it’s worth doing, someone else will try it. And I’ll cheer.

These days I have as many ideas for books as for companies; entrepreneurs may not be artists but they frequently think like them. Both frequently are ahead of their time, starting before anyone asks them to. That means they take risks, encounter opposition or rejection but they keep going. If successful, they frequently change; much to the frustration of managers and investors who’d prefer that they keep mining the same seam, they’ve little interest in repeating themselves. Both revel in exploration , discovery and change, where they find and express their freedom. And both understand the importance of Faulkner’s advice: ‘Kill your darlings.’

Every book, business or project needs an idea to get started. But beyond that are ingredients far more critical. As the late great James Baldwin said “Talent is insignificant….Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but most of all endurance.” You need them all.

To Go Deeper

Aspects of these ideas are explored in my new book Embracing Uncertainty: How Writers, Musicians and Artists Thrive in an Unpredictable World. Where many people seek to avoid uncertainty, artists move towards it, knowing that it is in that unexplored space that discoveries are made. In an age over-eager to disparage creativity as flaky and inefficient, it is artists who show us what we need to face into uncertainty with freedom.

For the Joy of It

One aspect of Substack that I particularly enjoy is calling out the work of others that challenges, enlightens and entertains me. The first Substack I ever subscribed to was George Saunders’s Story Club. Saunders is a terrific writer; his Lincoln in the Bardo a masterpiece that made me laugh out loud in public places and weep there too. He has a deeply civilized soul, having created a space where disagreement is possible and cordial.

My second Substack subscription was John Naughton’s Memex 1.1. I have read Naughton’s technology column in The Observer for years—and now it’s online, together with other goodies he picks up on the Internet. Naughton loves technology but he’s a friendly sceptic, highly alert to its potential but easily piercing the miasma of propaganda which it perpetrates.The industry as a whole would be better with more Naughtons about.