You are demanding something you're just not going to get. You want it to be clear that a solution will work. Next you'll say you want market research. Next you'll say you want to test 42 shades of blue.
This is why it's important for an idea to be distilled into something that can be tried without much investment, so that a lot of ideas can be tried and that you'll stumble onto something great. Larger ideas usually end up being tried through force or by going behind somebody's back, and that's probably how it'll stay.
Look, You're close. I think the process of trying out ideas is poorly understood by most people, and based on the way you wrote this, even yourself. You touched on it a bit - "distilling ideas into something that can be tried without much investment". That's the gem.
This is what you're supposed to do with an idea:
* Identify the hypotheses that make it work.
* Identify which hypothesis is the most critical one - if that one fails, then you know the idea isn't going to work. It's fair to say that an idea depends on 2 or more hypotheses - the key here is to identify the critical ones.
* Finally, figure out how to fail each critical hypothesis as fast (and as cheap) as you can. There is always a way. If you can't fail it, then you got something good. You don't need market research. You don't need the assurance the idea will work. Just test the hypothesis.
What about testing the non-critical hypotheses? You'll get to them. Failing those doesn't mean the idea should be thrown out, only that you need to adjust the idea to take your new knowledge into account.
That's it, really†. I'm using this process to build my own business, and it's working out extremely well. I've thrown out tons of bad ideas and got some great traction on the good ones. The scientific discipline to testing the ideas is the key.
†I lied. There's one more step: keep track of your critical hypotheses - that's your business intelligence. You can use them to validate future ideas.
Perhaps I should have replied to the grandparent comment :-)
I was reacting to this part: "Larger ideas usually end up being tried through force or by going behind somebody's back, and that's probably how it'll stay."
My impression was that you appeared to believe this is the only way to do things. I was hoping to suggest that it doesn't have to be. Re-reading your post again, I see better what you're trying to say.
I think there are some ideas that cannot be broken down and you really do have to be reckless to try them - they deserved a mention because otherwise my comment was too general. They're dangerous but they're also important for progress.
The fact is, Mr. I-Am, that most of the time, green eggs and ham are just rotten. We are not looking for a guarantee that we will like your culinary experiments, but we would like some assurance that they are edible.
Most businesses fail. Yet, we still do our best to encourage the formation of new ventures. We hail the small businessman as a hero. We don't lament him as a frivolous dreamer, even though purely based on the odds, that's what anyone who starts a business really is.
Risk aversion and stagnation go hand in hand. Or, as Theodore Roosevelt said, "Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat."
We do indeed encourage the formation of new ventures, but we do not encourage it unconditionally or randomly. We ask for a model. We ask what makes the would-be entrepreneur think it will work. And those entrepreneurs who can't answer, or whose answers aren't compelling, we ask to go convince somebody else.
Why do we do this? Because once again, the fact remains that most ideas are bad. Too much risk-aversion does indeed lead to stagnation, but too little risk-aversion is even more destructive. A balance must be struck, and the proper balance still leans heavily -not completely, but noticeably- toward caution.
>Most businesses fail. Yet, we still do our best to encourage the formation of new ventures. We hail the small businessman as a hero. We don't lament him as a frivolous dreamer, even though purely based on the odds, that's what anyone who starts a business really is.
This is a blatant double-standard. Non-entrepreneurs who take the same level of risk that is outright common in entrepreneurial ventures are lamented as frivolous dreamers.
One of these days, people are going to realize that little sentence was part of a few-dozen-paragraph speech.
> Nevertheless, while laying all stress on this point, while not merely acknowledging but insisting upon the fact that there must be a basis of material well-being for the individual as for the nation, let us with equal emphasis insist that this material well-being represents nothing but the foundation, and that the foundation, though indispensable, is worthless unless upon it is raised the superstructure of a higher life. That is why I decline to recognize the mere multimillionaire, the man of mere wealth, as an asset of value to any country; and especially as not an asset to my own country. If he has earned or uses his wealth in a way that makes him a real benefit, of real use- and such is often the case- why, then he does become an asset of real worth. But it is the way in which it has been earned or used, and not the mere fact of wealth, that entitles him to the credit. There is need in business, as in most other forms of human activity, of the great guiding intelligences. Their places cannot be supplied by any number of lesser intelligences. It is a good thing that they should have ample recognition, ample reward. But we must not transfer our admiration to the reward instead of to the deed rewarded; and if what should be the reward exists without the service having been rendered, then admiration will only come from those who are mean of soul. The truth is that, after a certain measure of tangible material success or reward has been achieved, the question of increasing it becomes of constantly less importance compared to the other things that can be done in life. It is a bad thing for a nation to raise and to admire a false standard of success; and there can be no falser standard than that set by the deification of material well-being in and for itself. But the man who, having far surpassed the limits of providing for the wants; both of the body and mind, of himself and of those depending upon him, then piles up a great fortune, for the acquisition or retention of which he returns no corresponding benefit to the nation as a whole, should himself be made to feel that, so far from being desirable, he is an unworthy, citizen of the community: that he is to be neither admired nor envied; that his right-thinking fellow countrymen put him low in the scale of citizenship, and leave him to be consoled by the admiration of those whose level of purpose is even lower than his own.
> The citizen must have high ideals, and yet he must be able to achieve them in practical fashion. No permanent good comes from aspirations so lofty that they have grown fantastic and have become impossible and indeed undesirable to realize. The impractical visionary is far less often the guide and precursor than he is the embittered foe of the real reformer, of the man who, with stumblings and shortcoming, yet does in some shape, in practical fashion, give effect to the hopes and desires of those who strive for better things. Woe to the empty phrase-maker, to the empty idealist, who, instead of making ready the ground for the man of action, turns against him when he appears and hampers him when he does work! Moreover, the preacher of ideals must remember how sorry and contemptible is the figure which he will cut, how great the damage that he will do, if he does not himself, in his own life, strive measurably to realize the ideals that he preaches for others. Let him remember also that the worth of the ideal must be largely determined by the success with which it can in practice be realized. We should abhor the so-called "practical" men whose practicality assumes the shape of that peculiar baseness which finds its expression in disbelief in morality and decency, in disregard of high standards of living and conduct. Such a creature is the worst enemy of the body of politic. But only less desirable as a citizen is his nominal opponent and real ally, the man of fantastic vision who makes the impossible better forever the enemy of the possible good.
It's fully reproduced in several places online under the name "Citizenship in a Republic", occasionally as "that speech he gave in Sorbonne": the first and last bits are very clear that his audience is not American. It is a speech very iconic of Teddy Roosevelt himself, too; one of the anecdotes in there is drawn from his time as a cowboy on the range.
This is why it's important for an idea to be distilled into something that can be tried without much investment, so that a lot of ideas can be tried and that you'll stumble onto something great. Larger ideas usually end up being tried through force or by going behind somebody's back, and that's probably how it'll stay.