Build a better mousetrap and the villagers will beat a path to your door
Those who own ideas own the universe. A common gripe among entrepreneurs is that there are no new ideas. Yet we are obsessed with being original. We hope that our story, idea, or invention will be the one that changes the world. But here’s the truth about unique business ideas. They are rare. The key to being original isn’t to build something new, it’s to build something better.
Nothing comes from nothing, but have an ace up your sleeve
Since humans have been writing things down, we’ve known that there are few new ideas. The ancient Greeks knew this, medieval philosophers knew this, and modern business leaders and creators know this.
Steve Jobs is credited for being one of the greatest inventors of the 21st century. Yet so much of his invention drew from a huge library of technological knowledge.
Cell phones existed before smartphones as did portable CD players, mobile applications, and streaming services. Jobs took all of these products and repackaged them into a new product class, the iPhone.
Jobs’ originality was in creating a simple, beautiful solution.
Innovation is not spun out of thin air. It’s easy to look at major discoveries, and businesses that have changed the world and believe that the people who created them were geniuses, but that’s rarely the case.
Isaac Newton, famously credited for discovering, conceptualizing, and communicating gravity, knew this. But if Newton hadn’t brought gravity into mainstream thinking, someone else would have. I doubt we would be walking around in 2022 wondering why we are stuck to the earth.
In fact, Galileo, who lived shortly before Newton had already asked the question — why do giant planets like the earth, the sun, and the moon move?
It was the product of years of intellectual efforts by mathematicians like Johannes Kepler, who based his study on the astronomical findings of Nicolaus Copernicus.
But Newton had one competitive advantage. He had incredible conceptual clarity and could reduce complex mechanical questions to the application of dynamic principles.
It’s what prompted him to famously say:
“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
This leg-up is how all modern innovation happens, it’s how stories get told. The very language that informs modern computing, which is the foundation of the iPhone, is based on Aristotelian logic.
Simplify your thinking
Modern business is mired in complexity. Rambling meetings, data-dump reports, and spreadsheets of useless information.
This has fostered a culture of reactivity where work is ceaselessly busy with little room for creativity. This time-wasting behavior and firefighting are considered by many to be real work. But living in a constant state of action — email-checking, Zoom calls, report writing, and meetings leaves no room for thinking.
One of the hardest things to do is to simplify thinking. It’s one of the most underrated and undervalued skills in business.
But at the end of the day, our world is desperate for simple solutions and discovery is inevitable when you’re trying to solve problems.
So leave some time to simplify, and wade through the clutter to find your golden nuggets.
Seven basic plots create infinite stories
This question isn’t unique to the business world. Creators and storytellers are often left scratching their heads, wondering where to look for unique ideas. In The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories, author Christopher Booker argues that there are only seven basic narrative plots in storytelling:
- Overcoming the Monster
- Rags to Riches
- The Quest
- Voyage and Return
- Comedy
- Tragedy
- Rebirth
Every single story ever told is one of these seven plots. Yet there are millions of stories.
So where does this leave writers, who all want to create their own, unique narratives and plots?
The plot is one piece of the puzzle. A good story includes characterization, execution, voice, imagination, and plot all rolled into one. Originality is in the pen of the writer who writes it.
J.K. Rowling told the classic tale of a hero’s journey to overthrow a dark lord.
She imagined entire worlds and created subplots that drove the narrative forward. But the core of her story of an ordinary hero on an extraordinary quest could be any number of fantasy epics like The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, or The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Yet she made it unique by setting it in a British boarding school.
Her narrative choice changed the entire complexion of the story and we credit her for creating something original.
Business and entrepreneurship are the same. A few good ideas made constantly better, each one an iteration on the last.
Good ideas are nothing without great execution
A good idea without execution is like a rocket without fuel. I meet entrepreneurs and writers all the time who have great ideas and no follow-through. So their ideas are essentially sh*t.
Meanwhile, I see people with average, boring, unoriginal ideas killing it in the real world. Ideas alone do not guarantee success. Well, technically nothing does, but without action, you can kiss the hope of getting a lift-off goodbye.
Anyone that has ever succeeded has executed their idea.
The most successful people in the world don’t have the best ideas. They are the best at executing good ideas.
In the end, the thing between your idea and the world is you. No one is going to execute your idea the way you do. No one will tell the story, write the plot, and build characters like you. No one can bring your vision to life and birth it into the world the way you can. It’s what makes your idea original.
So go ahead and build a better mousetrap. Tap into that big, beautiful brain of unoriginal ideas and golden nuggets to create something better and unique!
