The myriads of religious convictions in just Christianity who all base their beliefs in a single book but with hugely different interpretations says that an idea, even if it is not tangible can still be very valuable. Add the myriads of other religious views that still have millions of people following them and you see the perfect power of an idea or ideal flex its muscles. In business however, an idea is often underrated, and often not very appreciated. As its far reaching potential is not as easily grasped out of the intangible ether as is religion, but it can be just as powerful as a religious ideal.
Ideas can shape a culture as religion has proven. But ideas in business can also shape the course of a business and definitely dictate the culture of a business. As it is clear to all modern superstar CEO and managers, ideas and the people that have them are the greatest assets of a company. Whether some ideas by themselves seem so simple as to have been invented by a child when put together in the right way and funneled down an action path, even the simplest combination of ideas can lead to innovation. These ideas may not be measurable in their impact, but they can carry a far reaching effect on a business. It is the people that expound them that make them powerful. It is the people that can make them contagious enough to recruit others to the idea and ultimately recruit the hearts of the customer so they happily spread the word and count themselves as hearts that love the idea—that make them successful for the business.
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Visionaries like Steve Jobs are the poster child for the power of idea and ideals. He is not a particularly technical person, in fact he is very new age in thinking, but he had the passion to take a dying company and turn it into the most valuable company in the world that continues to do well even after his death. His secret is not just his guiding principles which make his company a juggernaut but his care for finding the right talent to make his ideas shine in the heart of the customers. His ideas and guiding principles are not technical in nature they reach the hearts of his disciples and his customers in a way where they sing the laurels of the products that he intuits will be loved by the public. Steve himself admits that he cannot do anything without the talent he recruits as he wisely states in this video:
Steve Jobs’ Vision–Visionary Extraordinaire
He leads, he encourages, he shapes the idea but he does not execute them, others are the ones that bring his ideas to life and he recognizes this.
Not all companies can have a Steve Jobs guiding them nor visionaries as powerful as those he recruited to make his company the number one technology company in the world with $100 billion in cash and a problem of what to do with it. But each successful company relies on those immeasurable ideas to make their mark in the world. Most of the time these ideas by themselves seem worthless but when gather and built by a team they become the fountain of riches for the business. Yet on paper alone they do not seem very impressive and their effects cannot be objectively measured most of the time until all of the efforts are spent making them a reality. Employees and their ideas is what makes a company successful and sometimes there is no good measure of an idea prior to its execution just a zealot belief in it until it is proven right (or sometimes wrong). In the end an idea is worth zero until the passion of the inventor moves it to an executed idea—and most of the time this takes a team of people to accomplish.
The proof of the importance of ideas is in the intellectual property registry of ideas, which 99% of the time will never be looked at or used; but are valuable enough to spend billions a year to register them as intellectual property. Only when someone later might want to use them do they gain value but even as a patent itself they are only pop the value of a company on paper, when executed they can be the difference between success and failure even if they collected dust for 17 years and are used at the end of the intellectual property’s protection.
Those that try to square peg a person’s worth simply on objective measurable goals often lose out on the best talent because like Steve Jobs’ lack of technical skills their ideas could not be measured, but like Steve they could be the next visionary that surfaces to move humanity in a new breakthrough path. Not all inventors and imagineers are super successful or even extremely adept but their ideas could be as valuable as those that Steve had that made Apple a legacy that will immortalize his name in the hearts of many for generations to come. Talent in business needs to be appreciated in more than measurable ways. Like with Steve ideals and ideas are often the only marketable trade a person has and even if they are not as brilliantly executed as Steve’s they can indeed be the path that leads to great success; even if they never immortalize its inventor and even if they are only worth a few hundred million in profits rather than a few hundred billions.
Takeaways
| Talent is the backbone of any successful business and nurturing good talent is the number one role of executives. |
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| Steve Jobs admits his great success is built on the shoulder of the giant talent he was wise enough to recruit. |
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| Talent cannot always be objectively measured. Ideas have limitless potential when coming from the right talent—Steve Jobs is the proof. |
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