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Growthink Blog

The Business Of Ideas

Print Written by Jay Turo on Monday, October 22, 2007
Categories:

The best entrepreneurs and executives at fast-growing companies have the ability to move efficiently and profitably from ideation to execution, and then from execution back to ideation and then back to re-focused execution. And they do so regarding all aspects of their businesses -- marketing and sales, operations and finance.

Those entrepreneurs and executives that are less successful often are overly focused on just ideas or just execution rather than on the synergistic relationship between the two -- the great "idea person" we all know that never gets around to actually executing upon an action plan. Those that are focused on just ideas often let their desire for the perfect idea get in the way of the day to day need their businesses often have to implement a less than perfect one, not quickly and rigorously enough subjecting their ideas to the rumble/tumble of the marketplace.

Those that are focused on just execution, while on some levels far more effective than the ideological set , are often too slow to react to changing technological, marketplace or competitive conditions. They also often define their value offerings so narrowly that they miss much of the profit opportunities of their product or service offering.

Classic examples of this include IBM defining themselves as a hardware company in the 1980s as opposed to an information technology solutions company, thereby ceding the software field opportunity to Microsoft. Also, the traditional phone companies in the 1990s failing to leverage their huge telecommunications IP portfolios created a huge profit from emerging marketssthat was filled by mobile and Internet-based communications.

The best entrepreneurs and successful executives are constantly finding the balance between ideation and execution. They are masters at what we at Growthink like to call, "The Business of Ideas." They find a way to be both creative and task-focused, innovative and execution-oriented, creating new products and services that shake up the marketplace and are in market channel for customers to experience and buy.

We at Growthink get to work with entrepreneurs and businesses like these every day, helping them to shape their business strategies to maximize their competitive value, realize their opportunities, establish sustainability for their business models and seek capital to finance their endeavors. Sometimes, as is often the case with growing enterprises, the balance tips out of favor. Make sure your business or executive has the tools in place, or a strategic advisor at hand, to help them realign the equilibrium between ideas and execution

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Lafayette Howell says

These comments are profound in many ways for organizations that face a real conundrum with managers who are trying to protect their jobs compared to young, vibrant MBAs who may not appreciate the context for execution. Unfortunately, many HR organizations tend not to help address this gulf believe that by getting the best and brightest is the answer. This confluence of experience and high energy is the difference maker. Google provides a terrific illustration with their CEO when compared to the company's founders. The real innovation at Google is the human resource systems, and arguably less with the technology.

Posted at 8:37 am
Tony Bright says

Myself being an IDEA type with 21 inventions, this article really hit home! The way to be creative and task-focused, innovative and execution-oriented is to know your limitations and hire a task-focused management team, because we innovators are rarely competent in these areas of execution. Sadly, most of us that think out-of-the-box, believe that they can also execute. Unfortunately, this is simply not the case! The end result being that their great Idea simply dies on the vine.
Posted at 11:15 am
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