Jason Murphy

Purple Cow Part 1: Remarkable Ideas vs. Remarkable Execution.

Aug 2, 2008 Business & Marketing

Lately I’ve been finding my thoughts in a paradigm shift. Realizing my influence within my various relationships of employment, family, and other acquaintances isn’t necessarily as I perceived. My previous employer, as many of us who worked their frequently discussed and commented on, didn’t value innovative thoughts and ideas. Or employees. It was frustrating to sit in meeting after meeting, realizing that your purpose there was to fill an empty seat and help cycle the air. I wouldn’t necessarily think it’s a self-confidence issue, but after months of not being there I can look back and realize the dehumanizing nature that surrounded me.

Now, I’m gainfully employed in a company that values my experience. However, I realize that I am now on the reverse side of the role that I despised so much. I struggle with letting my team know that I do in fact value their ideas. Part of the difficulty of working in the mid-stages of a growth company is everyone has ideas, but we don’t have resources to execute them all. Different business objectives often see priorities sort out differently than logic would direct, but the truth of the matter is that when ideas are plentiful, the best ones don’t always win. But what makes one idea more “remarkable”, as Seth Godin and his purple cow would say, than another?

One concept that always comes back to me was something a former employer (a couple of jobs ago), who is now a good friend of mine, would always say: “There are no monopolies on new ideas”. This was always a healthy reminder that even though someone had a good idea, it doesn’t mean that anyone else can’t come up with an idea of equal or better value. Another sub-culture that we pushed at that company was that execution was everything. You could write down idea after idea all day long, but if nothing was executed, or if it were executed poorly, then they are worth nothing more than the paper they are written on. Thus, ideas aren’t very remarkable if they don’t have decent execution.

But what about those no-brainer ideas, that once you see you immediately think “Why didn’t I think of that first?!”. Or a worse thought: “I had that idea years ago!”. This has happened to me an uncountable amount of times. I’ve gotten to the point where I just smile and say “good for him/her”. What happened was that someone took that simple idea and executed it. The idea maybe wasn’t the most brilliant of ideas, but the execution of that idea was remarkable.

What happens when you get a remarkable idea with poor execution? Ask the former founders of Gizmondo or Tapwave, or ask Nokia. All made portable gaming systems with remarkable ideas. One had a touch screen, another had built-in GPS, while one had a built-in phone. All those systems are pretty much defunct now (with the exception of Nokia’s N-Gage which transitioned from a hardware platform to a software service). All were great ideas, but the execution of bringing them to market was done poorly.

What happens when you take an idea and give it remarkable execution? Ask Apple and their iPhone. The iPhone wasn’t revolutionary in itself. What was revolutionary was the way that the iPhone was packaged together and marketed. It was Steve Jobs’ execution of the idea that was remarkable.

Another example of remarkable idea vs. remarkable execution would be in the world of search engines, another industry I am close to. You had companies like FAST, ASK, and Gigablast that all had remarkable technologies. Then you had companies like Yahoo who had remarkable execution. The market was wide open and was actually loosing a lot of money for a lot of companies. Until an underdog by the name of Google came around, and a media anti-hero by the name of GoTo.com at about the same time, both of which had remarkable technologies AND remarkable execution. What happened? Google is now the largest internet company in the world, and Overture was acquired by Yahoo and together they hold second place for the title.

The business world is full of stories of remarkable ideas vs. remarkable execution. Currently in my professional career, I’m at a point where I have dozens of remarkable ideas. This paradigm shift I am going through is helping me to realize that once again I am transitioning into a point where I start directing remarkable execution. It’s an exciting place to be. The team I work with on a daily basis is completely capable and have fantastic ideas, we have some fantastic vendors that DO execute remarkably, and the combination of the two is is more than exciting.