Dumb ideas | Work Series

A very long time ago, a group of three computer literates would meet four times a week at 5 am in their employer’s office to create something meaningful for the world.

Read time: less than a min.

After brainstorming, whiteboarding and scratching hundreds of ideas for several weeks, they came up with two ideas.

Idea 1 – Develop a free online book for anyone to edit
Idea 2 – Develop a free video calling application for groups

You may have guessed what those applications are. And if you are thinking of Wikipedia and Skype, then you are wrong. These ideas were conceived long before either of them hit the internet market.

In fact, these ideas never saw the light of the day. Because those guys decided that they were either very dumb or impossible considering the internet’s popularity and technical constraints of that time.

I was one of those three boys. Reflecting, it seems obvious that we should have stayed the course and turned the impossible into reality.

At face value, most breakthroughs looked dumb at first and even impossible.

Turning your personal vehicle into a cab.
Allowing strangers to pay to stay in your house.
Taking pictures and sharing with others.
An open and free encyclopedia on the internet.
Free video calling for large groups
Cars running on batteries.
A shopping mall on the internet.
Vehicles driving on their own.

No matter how silly your ideas might be, if you are passionate about them, then go for it. Because the next breakthrough is almost certainly going to be something really dumb, impossible or unoriginal.

Thank you for sharing some of your precious time with me each week.

Leave a comment if you liked it. 

With gratitude, until next week. 

Razak
CommonInterest