The age of rapid junk

Ideas were never the bottleneck.

Transforming ideas into a prototype took time and money, but also wasn't the key bottleneck.

No, the key, main, pivotal, ultimate, I'm running out of superlatives, bottleneck is developing an idea people will adopt and pay for.

Professionals, including innovators, have misunderstood "making the thing" for "people will use the thing" since the dawn of mankind.

I am confident there was a prehistoric man who had a brilliant idea about combining woolly mammoth bone with lichen to create soft-club. He spent months looking for just the right bone and carefully selected lichen and moss patches that match his vision. Then he was heartbroken when his tribe rejected the brilliant innovation.

We can make prototypes faster than ever.

Great. I am not being ironic.

We still have the same old problems: we get too attached to our solutions, we assume too much about what others will do, and we are more willing to go down with a sinking ship than change course and adjust.

That is why good and proven innovation practices—e.g. Lean Startup, Design, Thinking, Outcome-Driven Innovation, TRIZ—are now more important than ever.

Developing ideas is more than making a prototype—it is about understanding what people need, creating something they will value, and then building a sustainable business around it.