Defending yourself in advance against all the possible ramifications of success has strong diminishing returns. As a general rule, it is more important to try something new, and work on the problems as they arise, than to figure out a way to do something without having any problems.

I’ll go one further and say that trying to figure out a way to do something without having any problems is actually impossible. Trying to make an idea perfect before we try it is the same as saying “we’re not really going to try it.”

New ideas must be executed – they are no good to anyone if they’re just ideas. The best approach is to build, launch and tweak. The way to do this is to figure out if the idea is executable (build), get it out in the world (launch), get feedback on what works and what doesn’t and fix the things that don’t work (tweak). Then repeat.

Our great new ideas will become great innovations by improving through iteration.

(here’s Phil Long’s take on Cognitive Surplus…)