The didn’t exactly say what a great ideas was, they mainly gave examples of good and bad ideas such as how successful blockbuster was and how bad “invisible jeans” are.

They also said you need prophets (idea people) and barbarians (people to drive the idea) to make great ideas and execute them well. Which I believe is one of the most fundamental things they discussed in the book.

Then they talk about problems you get when developing products (and how most companies go about developing them in the wrong way), the top ten reasons why good ideas can fail and why other ideas fail outright.

I think most of the juice however resides in their seven step process which you can check out here. The thing which ‘got’ me though, was that they emphasize the importance of learning and becoming an expert in the area which you’d like to create an idea in. So, instead of brainstorming first with little background knowledge and learning all about a topic later, they aim to get a solid foundation from which they can create their ideas from.

Whilst I’m not confident that reading the book alone can increase it to 50 percent, having prophets and barbarians in your business might pull it over the mark.

Everybody has ideas, the visionary can recognize it and has the guts to act on it.

After reading their book did they convince you that their process could improve your products success rate to 1 in 2?