These days, with all the talk about "internet time," professional workers are always trying to be the first with new ideas. But is that really the only path to success? Is it, indeed, a very effective path at all? What about being second?
Our culture certainly encourages people to be "first." In school, the emphasis ranges from who raises a hand first in class to who graduates with the highest grade-point average. The valedictorian - first in the class - gets lots of honors, but the salutatorian - second in the class - has to make the speech (phooey!).
Sports competitions also honor the "winner," and books on problem solving and business often borrow this metaphor - emphasizing finding the "winning" idea before anybody else. But most problem-solving areas of life are not, in fact, like sports. It's not having the idea that matters, it's what you do with the idea that counts.
And, in fact, ideas don't count that much in sports, either. Anyone can have the idea, "Hit a home run now and win the game," but there's a lot more to hitting home runs than simply having the idea. To have a fair chance of hitting a home run, you have to practice, practice, and practice. As in most of life, the key issue is not who is there first with the idea; the key issue is how you develop the idea once you have it. It's not your ideas alone that win, but ideas plus capability and the will to develop your ideas.
If you think having ideas first is the issue, consider this. Every year, tens of thousands of individuals start businesses based on being the first with a "new" idea. If that was all it took to be wildly successful, many of these firms would quickly displace all of the giant firms and become giants themselves, every year! Yes, we all know stories of small firms that had a better idea and indeed succeeded at becoming giants, but most of the time, the giants persist and the midgets fall humbly by the wayside.
Giant companies survive the onslaught of little start-ups with one of two strategies:
1. Exploring many parallel ideas and developing the few good ones.
2. Letting others do most of the searching for ideas, then developing the few good ones.
What can the individual professional learn from these strategies?
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