Move fast to turn your big business ideas into actions

• Innovative and creative ideas are at the heart of most successful businesses. Ideas by themselves, however, have little value.
• They need to be developed, turned into innovative products or services and commercialised successfully so as to enable you to reap the benefits of your innovation and creativity.
• An entrepreneur should start by reducing his main projects into components and create reasonable and achievable steps that will move him forward.
• The challenge would be to balance idea generation and relentless focus.

I like observing people in busy areas. I like to sit in a restaurant, bar, side corner of a busy street or in a party and just observe. I find it interesting how people act differently when they know someone is watching.

I have sat at off road benches where tea is being served and kiosks where khat is being sold or chewed. I have also been in the company of drunk people in somewhat dingy bars.

To me, these are the places you will find some honest people who say what they really feel and indulge you in insightful business conversations.

I am usually the one to introduce businesses into the conversation, as 95 per cent of the time someone will have something to talk about. I cannot overemphasise how many times I have heard of great ideas.

One guy, I call him Mungai, has quite the plethora. He usually talks much when he has had some alcoholic glass (not sure where he gets it) or is chewing khat’.

If I wrote down every single idea this guy has come up with, I would have a 500- page book and it would probably be titled A million worthless business ideas (not because his ideas are not brilliant — but because they are just that – ideas).

His ideas are from simple farming techniques to solar powered plants that he has designed, to machines that interpret dreams and high security technology gadgets.

Mungai is the “one” who thought up the pressure washer; he is convinced that if he had put his idea on paper, all the users would be paying him some sort of dividend for his invention.

He is also the one who thought of the finger print security device; yet again, he is so sure he would have been rubbing shoulders with Bill Gates— if only he had worked on his idea.

Just the other day, after I had bought him a bag of his favourite edibles, Mungai told me he had the answer to end hunger in the world; he exclaimed, he had had a week of sleepless nights stewing over this “one” idea —a single pill made from natural products that will suppress hunger and subsequently imitate food satisfaction.

I think this idea is phenomenal. I would love to get such a pill. In fact, I would pay for it.

With it, I would not need to worry about cooking, washing dishes, and would have an extra three hours in my day-to-day work instead of preparing a meal and sitting down to enjoy it.

In the world of entrepreneurship, brilliant ideas are plentiful; Great execution, hardly much.  In his new book – Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the obstacles between vision and reality Edison said it best: “Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.”

Innovative and creative ideas are at the heart of most successful businesses. Ideas by themselves, however, have little value.

They need to be developed, turned into innovative products or services and commercialised successfully so as to enable you to reap the benefits of your innovation and creativity.