Entrepreneurs: Me Too
by Miki Saxon
Are you a ‘me too’ entrepreneur?
Do you dream about creating the next Facebook/Twitter/Instagram?
Throughout history there have always been too many products replicating or providing only slight improvements over what is already available.
The paraphrasing of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s comments into “Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door” is probably what made it the “most frequently invented device in U.S. history,” with 4,400 patents and thousands more that weren’t approved.
Much of social media and apps are the Twenty-first Century’s version of that mousetrap.
Who should you look to for inspiration?
Maybe Steve Jobs; while he didn’t invent; he took what was there (like MP3) and added amazing design to build his better mousetraps.
Or Thomas Edison, one of the greatest inventors/innovators of all time, “I find out what the world needs; then I proceed to invent.”
He also provided the quintessential definition of value when he said, “The value of an idea lies in the using of it.”
So if you believe your product meets the first criteria test it on the real world to be sure it’s in sync with the second.
Flickr image credit: label generator
