Death By Research

It is absolutely important that you do enough research on your ideas to give them the best chance of success, but it is equally important that you don’t spend so much time in the research phase that you miss the opportunity to put your ideas into action.

You might end up convincing yourself that your ideas are doomed to failure before you even try to validate them with real-world prospects.

Research can be a valuable tool to see if there is a record of anything similar to your idea was attempted in the past — but even if that attempt failed doesn’t mean yours will (nor dies it mean it will succeed).

Research it’s simply information.

It’s what you do with that information that matters.

Research can tell you What.
What was attempted before. What the historical results were. What happened next.
But it can’t tell you What you’ll do differently.

Research can tell you How.
How something was manufactured. How something was implemented. How the idea was received by the public.
But it can’t tell you How you’ll decide to implement your idea.

Research can tell you Where.
Where something was launched. Where something was shipped. Where something was built.
But it can’t tell you where you’ll take your idea next.

Research can tell you Who.
Who conceived of the concept. Who made/lost money. Who bought (or who didn’t).
But it can’t tell you who will love (or hate) your idea.

And research definitely can’t tell you Why you’ll decide to move forward with your ideas or leave them behind. No matter how much research is out there and how much of it you decide to pore through, you’ll never find a public record, a Wikipedia page, a website, a social media channel, a white paper, or an industry article that can tell you what you’re going to do next (or what your results will be).

Sometimes you just have to trust your gut and the best research you have at hand to take the next step and make some history of your own.