The Idea After The Idea

I was recently reading an article warning start-up entrepreneurs against developing and pitching internet business ideas that investors had all seen before.  Counted among the walking dead of concepts were social and business networking sites, online dating sites, search engines, micro payment/loan/investment sites, and portal/single sign-on sites.

The problem is, the author of this article is not only completely and totally wrong, but he may actually be helping to extinguish the next big evolutionary idea before it’s even caught fire beyond an initial spark.

• Yahoo! was the absolutely best search engine in the world — until Larry Page and Sergey Brin invented the search engine after the search engine.
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• MySpace was THE social network where you could connect with all your friends and share your updates, until Mark Zuckerberg decided to create a social network after the social network had already been invented, turning MySpace into dead space.
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• MP3 players were around for years and weren’t gaining much traction with the public until Steve Jobs came up with an idea for putting “1,000 songs in your pocket” — the MP3 player.

The best idea always emerges AFTER the best idea is already out in the world.  
It’s the idea after the idea that matters — and the idea after that one, and the idea after that one, and so on. That’s why I recommend throwing out your first ten ideas, so that you can get to the next 10 (even better) ideas.

You want a real creative challenge?  
Go out and re-invent something again — for the first time.