How complicated is it to polish your original idea and make it feasible enough to compete the existing industry stakeholders?

I often come across a common question when somebody talks entrepreneurship. I was talking to this friend of mine Raghav Jaitly when he asked — “How complicated is it to polish your original idea and make it feasible enough to compete the existing industry stake holders?

I would say — the question is irrelevant. There is not one company that did not deviate from its original idea and become the market player. We might as well be talking of survival here. Market Penetration is easy for any business — survival is tough. The process of survival is not complicated — but time taking and patience testing. The reason why most startups fail in the initial years is that they lose patience.

If we try to dig it further, there are various levels of market at each growth level for any enterprise. These markets are a part of one Major Market Segment — of the product is a part of. To make it simple, for example, Airtel has a market among mobile users — but it increases market survival strength by introducing side features (polished ideas) like Airtel music, Airtel money, Airtel DTH, Airtel ‘tera hai toh mera hai campaign’. To increase the awareness, apparently Airtel gave away a 700 crore branding project which has been active since they changed the logo of Airtel.

That is just one small example. Every company & Each company practices similar exercises to sustain growth and increase survival rates. For example Microsoft — not one day goes by when I don’t see at least one Microsoft commercial since I was a kid. And for example — Reliance Industries — Who are not so much active in showing what they are doing, but who are actually ‘polishing ideas’ every single week — if not every single day.

The question is never about making the right decisions — but to make decisions and then making them right.

Complication lies behind solving the patience-pressure game — you are in immense pressure of delivering things urgently — but you can’t lose patience either.

If the vision is to make it big — there is no question of quitting your venture. You are always working towards making something better. Steve jobs was polishing Apple even when he was dying with cancer — and I doubt if creating such awesome products like the I pad mini or I phone were any of his initial ideas. It’s a natural process and a company has to work constantly and consistently towards making something great!

The law behind the whole philosophy is rather simple — keep calm and carry on.

PS: The law of evolution fails if such question rises. We have to constantly evolve and change ourselves. Incorporating new ideas might be responsible for a complete shift in the business model — while in some cases, it might stick to the ‘original idea’.

Written by Sonesh Jain (soneshjain6@gmail.com)