Wednesday Words
To Go Where Your VisionPoints, a few inspiration points for you and your business.
The practical success of an idea, irrespective of its inherent merit, is dependent on the attitude of the contemporaries. If timely it is quickly adopted; if not, it is apt to fare like a sprout lured out of the ground by warm sunshine, only to be injured and retarded in its growth by the succeeding frost.
—Nikola Tesla
Though Tesla probably meant to be a pessimist (as was usual for him) when he said this, there’s a lot of truth in what he says. Following on yesterday’s post, could an optimist make use of Tesla’s “suggestion” to grow their business with less head-banging frustration?
Check that there’s a real market (or a positive “attitude”) for your product or service among your contemporaries early in the process.
If you’ve got a timely idea, you’ve got a heck of a head start—
So worry less about perfecting the concept, more about getting it to market in a timely manner.
It’s not easy, but it is possible, and hey, it’s worth preventing that nasty frostbite for your growing business.
Grow and be well,
Kelly Erickson
If you enjoyed this post, please Subscribe (it's free!) 
Comment 
Share
Trackback 
3 February 2010, 12:36 pm
Brilliant thinking. My understanding of business has changed a lot recently. It is not about just doing something that you love… it’s about offering a service or product that people really want. If the two can match, you’ve got an ideal setup. But one without the other is a formula for frostbite.
Todd Smith´s latest blog… I Like Old Cars – They’re Awefully Photogenic!
3 February 2010, 1:28 pm
Perhaps it was a shot at Edison. Wasn’t Tesla the one who invented AC, and built up Niagara Falls? Whereas Edison tried to build his company on DC, which was much more dangerous and could only be transported a few miles (?) so that the power plant essentially had to be just a few blocks away instead, say, in Niagara Falls.
I don’t remember all the details, but I believe they went head-to-head with the practical aspects of generating electricity for a while there, and Tesla won. (Though Edison is still the guy most people remember, despite the frostbite… There’s got to be a secondary message in their somewhere!)
Kind of like the adage that ideas are a dime a dozen; it’s what you make of those ideas (i.e. bring it to market) that counts.
~Graham
3 February 2010, 9:38 pm
Todd,
‘Fraid so. Everything else comes so much easier if those elements are in place in the beginning… but putting them in place is only part skill, and part luck. So speed-to-fail, and then retool, can be pretty useful as well.
Tesla was a nut, but man, he was a brilliant nut. So many things he said cut right to the core of success and failure like this one.
Graham,
Yep. Practically everything the guy said after they split (he originally worked for Edison) was a shot at Edison. Some are only mildly troubled like this one but some are so bitter they’re almost funny.
He also invented the radio, and fought in the courts to be recognized instead of Marconi for years. (It was settled in his favor, but not until after his death.)
What strikes me about this quotation is that I’m sure he didn’t see the positive message in it—as you say, it’s what you make of the ideas. There’s a lot of motivation in recognizing that—and so many things he said are very motivating in just this way. But—not for him. Sad, really.
He could have made more things happen, but he was always consumed by looking at the dark side, that ideas are a dime a dozen and that it is not, in real life, always the cream that rises to the top. So what? Life is not fair. I prefer to look for how to turn wisdom like this to good advantage.
Regards,
Kelly