Kristin Colier

Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats. — Howard Aiken

I consider myself an idea person. It’s one of my core strengths. I have a long and illustrious career of coming up with great ideas that never get anywhere, at least not on my watch.

In 1993 my friend Andy, an intern from Georgia Tech at one of the first companies I worked at (an internet technology company) showed me my first world wide website with the Mosaic Browser.

It was an interactive archeological dig where you could control robotic arms and watch on camera as bones and artifacts were revealed. It was very cool. Unprecedented implications.

I went to the president/CEO of the company and said “We should look into this, I think this web thing is going to be big.”

He smiled patiently and said something like “Don’t get too excited about it, Andy is just a college student.”

I’m not venting or trying to toot my horn here (ok, some venting and horn-tooting), but this story does prelude my recent epiphany. I have a tendency to throw my great ideas “out there,” hope some in-charge entrepreneurial type will love it, implement it, find great success, credit me and we all get rich. My genius should be enough.

Since then I have discovered, if I want other people to engage in the 99% perspiration part of nurturing my great brainchild – my idea has to contain a “buy-in strategy” as well as a general plan for implementation and measuring success. I should also anticipate and plan for revisions.

Successful entrepreneurs know this (or figure it out) when pitching a business concept to potential investors, but it is also true within a corporation or in any situation where you want your new ideas to thrive. This is possibly one of the largest sources of middle management frustration; The employee who has the most unique perspective on how to improve a process and has no leverage for implementing the solution.

My practical steps for getting ideas to fruition:
1. IDEA
2. Buy-In
3. Strategy
4. Implementation
5. Revision

Hang in there my brilliant genius friends.

Here’s “Working at the Carwash Blues” by Jim Croce – as interpreted by the Muppets. ( I couldn’t find a good original.)
My favorite lyric “They wouldn’t listen to the fact that I was a genius, they man said we got all that we can use.”

Cheers!
-Kristin