Does an idea have to be original to be worth pursuing?
When it comes to launching your ideas into the world, there’s one barrier that stops a lot of people. A reader recently summed it up this way:
“I guess my biggest obstacle is that I don’t feel my ideas are unique. Someone else has already thought of it and started doing something with it… so my efforts will be a waste of time.”
I’ll be honest: I’ve felt this many times myself. I’ll come up with a new idea, get really excited about it, and then become disappointed when I find out that someone else has already had the same idea.
But over time, I’ve realized that this line of thinking is flawed. So today I want to share a few reasons why unique ideas are not a prerequisite to making an impact.
1. Thinking is not doing
In the past, I’ve quit projects when I found out that other people were working on similar ideas. But then years later, I’d realize those other projects had never come to fruition. Sometimes the people hit a roadblock and gave up, other times they lost interest and pursued something else. Either way, the result was the same: their idea never made it to the people who needed it.
”Someone else has already thought of it and started doing something with it” doesn’t mean that those people will follow through to the end. But you can.
2. Competition is actually a good sign
If anything, the fact that other people have thought of your idea is a good thing, because it means your idea has potential. If you were the only person concerned with this problem, it might be a sign the rest of the world doesn’t really see it as a problem at all. In that case, you could end up working really hard on something that nobody actually cares about.
When other people are working on the same problem, it’s not necessarily a sign the market is saturated. It could just be a sign that the problem is really important.
3. Different strokes for different folks
How many different streaming services are on your TV right now? How many different ways are there to listen to the same music on your phone? Spotify and Apple Music are both multi-billion-dollar companies. Even Tidal makes hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
The fact that there’s already someone addressing the same market doesn’t mean they’ve captured all of it. Different people prefer different things, and your thing might be the one they prefer most.
4. Same wheels, different road
Every idea in history is a combination of ideas that came before. It took lots of people inventing wheels, chains, gears, and pedals before someone else could invent the bicycle. But people have taken that one invention and turned it into all sorts of different things: road bikes, gravel bikes, tandem bikes, centaur bikes… Each addressing different needs for different people.
As you work on your idea, you will inevitably bring your own inputs to the table. The result is something that might be similar to other things that already exist, but it will have your unique fingerprint on it. And that fingerprint might be exactly what someone is looking for.
5. Context is king
Oftentimes it’s not a particular idea, insight, or piece of information that actually helps someone. Instead, it’s the context of how that information gets applied.
There have been plenty of times when I intellectually understood a concept, but I couldn’t implement it practically until someone showed me how it worked in real life, or how they applied it to their unique situation. Then suddenly, everything became clear.
You might not have new information, but you do have specific context, and that context might be what helps another person.
Think of it this way: every Algebra teacher in the world is teaching the same material. We locked that down some time ago, actually. But some teachers have a way of saying “Look, I know this stuff can be confusing. But here’s how I got clarity on it.” Those are the teachers who change lives. It’s not that their material is better, it’s that they’re able to apply that material to the context their students are in. That’s what makes the difference.
6. There’s plenty of problem to go around
Before I got into the corporate speaking world, I thought “there are already plenty of people teaching creativity and innovation. They don’t need me.”
But I eventually realized that despite this fact, the world was still desperate for new ideas. Organizations were still having a hard time getting insights out of their team, developing those into actionable ideas, and launching them into the world. And if that were true, it meant the work wasn’t done yet.
Since then, I’ve had the opportunity to work with some incredible organizations like Walmart, Fidelity, Chick-fil-A, LexisNexis, Michelin, Cisco, and more, helping them get better ideas into the world.
If the problem still exists, then the work isn’t done yet.
In light of that, the question isn’t “Is my idea 100% unique?” Instead, the question is this: “Regardless of how unique my idea is, does it have the potential to help people?” If the answer is yes, the next question becomes “Am I willing to do the work it will take to bring this idea to life and get it front of the people who need it?”
Only you can answer that one.
