Ideas are seeds. They are tiny, nondescript, blink-and-you-miss-it insights. However, ideas have the remarkable ability to grow quickly, outgrowing their origins. Growing beyond anything the originator of the idea could have imagined at the beginning. When you think about the biggest forces shaping your world in business, politics, and religion, you would realize that they all started out as a tiny idea. Just by taking action on that initial tiny idea, something was set in motion that has forever altered your life and your world. An idea is an idea. The initial idea does not have to be bold, loud, or even feasible-at-first-glance. You just need to give it a chance. You should never underestimate the power of your own ideas.
The beginning of an idea is not as important as what one is able to make of it. There is no such thing as a stupid idea. The seed of the idea might look stupid, but as the idea grows and takes on a life of its own, you often fail to recognize the original idea anymore. Heads were turned in July 2022 when a Senior Vice President at Google noted that “in our studies, something like almost 40% of young people, when they’re looking for a place for lunch, they don’t go to Google Maps or Search, they go to TikTok or Instagram”. It is interesting to see social media apps take market share from a search engine. It would be hard to have foreseen such a situation.
When Isaac Newton published “Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy”, he could never have realized just how much he had changed the course of the world. The applications of his ideas have gone beyond the initial scope. Your ideas can have a similar effect on the world. There is no human race or nation that has a monopoly on viable ideas. Your ideas can change your world forever. It begins with an acknowledgement that world changing ideas can originate from anywhere. However, you must be ready to work on your ideas. If you invest the time and attention demanded by an idea, you will be surprised to see your ideas evolve into something that can change your world forever.
