When I was in business school, one of the most common things I would hear people say was that they wanted to do something new—like start a company or take an unconventional career path—but that they needed “a great idea” first. That always surprised me a bit, especially at an entrepreneurial hub like Stanford, since most successful entrepreneurs don’t begin with brilliant ideas—they discover them.
Ironically, this would include the biggest business idea to come out of Stanford in decades. Google didn’t begin as a brilliant vision, but as a project to improve library searches, followed by a series of small discoveries that unlocked a revolutionary business model.
via Don’t Bet Big. Little Bets Are The Ones That Turn Into Billion-Dollar Ideas.