It seems that everyone is in search of the “next great idea”.  But ideas are just the starting point for new products or services.  Implementing an idea often proves to be the hard part.

In his book Open Business Models, Henry Chesbrough gives the example of Qualcomm.  The company succeeded in licensing its CDMA technology.  It tried to repeat that success by licensing a technology to deliver movies to theaters over the internet.  It failed at the latter.  The difference was that Qualcomm went through the pains of implementation before licensing CDMA.  With the movie technology, it came up with the idea but left the implementation to licensees. 

That’s one reason Fluid Innovation focuses on commercializing software technologies originally developed by companies for their own internal use.  These are not merely ideas; they have been acted upon.  The software is usually developed and battle tested inside the company that created it. 

Compare this to the typical patent, which is just an idea that has been explained in a legal filing.  Finding someone to make the idea become reality is the hardest part.  Why not search for ideas that have already made it over the implementation hurdle?