Every once in a while I have an idea that I think is fantastic. I get really excited and start imagining how much better the world would be if I did this thing. I explore the limits of the idea in my mind while examining it from every angle – is this really as good as I think it is? Once the excitement wears off a bit I get around to asking myself a very important question: why hasn’t this been done before?
I can think of four categories of answers this question could have:
1) It has been done before but failed for some reason 2) It hasn’t been done before because no one cared enough to do it 3) It hasn’t been done before because it is/was technologically impossible 4) It hasn’t been done before because no one could make the financial numbers work
Over the next several days I’m going to talk through these different possibilities and what they mean for your idea.