Avoid the Moses syndrome

An idea that everybody ignores will often not make it very far. Many ideas need a willing coalition of people to help improve and nurse the idea through execution. This means that boring ideas or ideas that are too strange to be understood, often never take off.

A metaphor. However, this is not enough. Moses was a great leader. He managed to take the children of Israel, as slaves, out of Egypt and form them into a nation. However, he was unable to do that last important step of bringing them to the promised land.

Getting back to idea space. An idea needs to be interesting and palatable enough to be picked up. However, in order to reach that “promised land” of execution, the idea needs something more. It needs to be able to focus and guide execution. Sometimes, those properties of ideas that help it take off, are not the ones that lead to ultimate success. This divergence is common in scientific ideas, where an idea may be proposed because it works and gain traction because it has an internal beauty. For some ideas, the same property which allow sit to take off, also helps it succeed.

Does your idea check both boxes: take-off and arrival?