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Turn creative ideas into goods and services today

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Avoid thinking too much about a venture, instead convert your ideas into products to reap the benefits of innovation. FOTOSEARCH

I have been accused of trying to dabble my hands into too much, which ends up causing me headaches and I get angry at people for not coming through.

But a witty and smart governor once told me, in order to succeed in Africa – you must work more than one project at a go.

The key is to just keep at it until one takes hold. I am not sure I know of any successful entrepreneur who has not tried a single venture and not failed.

Even when one specialises in a particular field, challenging battles will come or one will have to go through a learning curve to achieve optimum success.

The problem is when one keeps thinking about starting something then takes too much time dwelling on the thoughts and rarely starts.

It is comparable to writing a book — the manuscript is finished and peer review bets it is a good read, but every single time you read it you see so many mistakes that you end up changing the whole thing as well as getting confused.

That is what happens when entrepreneurs try to engage in a venture, they think too much about the challenges ahead that they end up not doing anything or convince themselves not to get into the business.

In the world of entrepreneurship, brilliant ideas are plenty. Great execution, hardly much.  In the book – Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles between Vision and Reality, by Scott Belsky, Thomas Edison said it best: “Genius is one per cent inspiration, 99 per cent 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 creativity.

Entrepreneurs need to start acting and spare the thinking and analysing or talk for bystanders or people like me, who like to listen.

But if one truly wants to establish a business and work on ‘that’ idea that cannot get out of their mind then he must think about adhering to some handy tips.

You could first start by reducing your main projects — those that are very dear to you — into components and create reasonable, achievable steps that will move you forward.

You might also want to generate your ideas in moderation — knowing what you can and cannot do is paramount and new ideas will often get you off the track. The challenge would be to balance idea generation and relentless focus.

You might even consider acting without conviction as opposed to what we have been taught — to think before we act. Waiting might only build apathy and increases the chances that another genius idea will capture your fancy, enthusiasm and energy.

Finally, if your idea still lingers, you might want to check out your competitors, sometimes visiting your rival’s business premise and seeing what they are doing can be a powerful force for actualisation and implementation.

It does not matter how many ideas you have, if you are able to manage all of them at a go – there is no problem, your problem might be people around you who want to steal your ideas or silence you, or do anything in their powers to see you fail.

Just smile at them but keep going, there is nothing wrong with attempting, as long as you get up and keep the push.

Nature will deal with persons who have malicious intent, goodness, good thoughts and great hearts always prevail no matter how long it takes and how hard the struggle might be.

So, just try it out, if it fails, try it out again and again, but do not ever regret not trying; the surest way to failure is not trying at all.

Now wake up in the morning and dip your fingers into your thinking, it will be tough but turning your ideas into tangible and workable projects will always show in the results.