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I’ve heard so many times that ideas are not all that scarce in business — that ideas are everywhere, and that execution is the true differentiator that can make

I’ve heard so many times that ideas are not all that scarce in business — that ideas are everywhere, and that execution is the true differentiator that can make an entrepreneur successful. There is no shortage of talented, capable people in organizations, who could dream up and lead the next profitable line of the business. The challenge is empowering and encouraging those people in organizations with top-down structures and constraining, predefined success metrics for employees’ managers. It follows that making more ideas (by chance meetings or what have you) is not going to help if the bottleneck is the organization’s enthusiasm to support the ideas that happen. Perhaps randomly bumping into an executive is the traditional avenue for an individual contributor to get their ideas to the decision maker with the ability to help them? I’d argue that a direct instant message to that executive is much more efficient.

bluGill 5y ago
> I’d argue that a direct instant message to that executive is much more efficient. Only in a small company. In a large company everyone sending just one idea a year means the CEO never has time to do anything other than read those messages. In large companies filters are required to ensure that work the CEO can get work done.
- hugh-avherald 5y ago
  My instinct was the same as yours, but I wonder whether this is really true. Obviously you couldn't read a treatise per employee, but even for thousands of employees a single sentence per employee wouldn't take too long. And I doubt that even a majority of employees would actually send one.
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    I’ve been in two companies that had open submissions to the executives for ideas. In an about 400 person org, about 25 people submitted ideas. In the other one, it was about 40 in several thousand. The one thing I can’t factor out is apathy, as every time next to nothing was done with the suggestions and perhaps lack of prior success dissuaded people from trying again.
  - bluGill 5y ago
    With 100,000 employees sending one message a year, that is 50 messages per hour (depending on work day and vacation). While individual messages don't take long to read, it is enough. Don't forget that if the idea is good it will take a lot of effort to implement it. Note the the other reply gave interesting data that I didn't factor into this. You can expanding it to assume that all ideas need to be given a good reply or the people will give up on the idea.

bluGill 5y ago

> I’d argue that a direct instant message to that executive is much more efficient. Only in a small company. In a large company everyone sending just one idea a year means the CEO never has time to do anything other than read those messages. In large companies filters are required to ensure that work the CEO can get work done.

hugh-avherald 5y ago
My instinct was the same as yours, but I wonder whether this is really true. Obviously you couldn't read a treatise per employee, but even for thousands of employees a single sentence per employee wouldn't take too long. And I doubt that even a majority of employees would actually send one.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  I’ve been in two companies that had open submissions to the executives for ideas. In an about 400 person org, about 25 people submitted ideas. In the other one, it was about 40 in several thousand. The one thing I can’t factor out is apathy, as every time next to nothing was done with the suggestions and perhaps lack of prior success dissuaded people from trying again.
- bluGill 5y ago
  With 100,000 employees sending one message a year, that is 50 messages per hour (depending on work day and vacation). While individual messages don't take long to read, it is enough. Don't forget that if the idea is good it will take a lot of effort to implement it. Note the the other reply gave interesting data that I didn't factor into this. You can expanding it to assume that all ideas need to be given a good reply or the people will give up on the idea.