Think You Know Your Market? Fuggettaboutit

For instance, everybody has a plan for a better mousetrap. Everybody at one point or another said, "somebody should invent X" In fact, it is such a common experience to imagine what the world needs and think up an idea to fix it that the author says ideas are basically worthless.
Ideas are like opinions, everybody has them. And it's not that good ideas beat poor ones in the marketplace. That is a myth that business TV shows and books promote.
So what's the catch? What's the difference between a successful plan and just another great idea? One of the axioms is that you never know your market. No matter how much you study, how much you research and correlate the information, the market is always an unknown. What you can do is work very hard at identifying your market and aligning your product features and strategy accordingly. And you need to continue to do that. The idea that somehow a few smart people at your organization knows how to position and brand your product just because they are smart is a dangerous and foolish one. Many companies have failed working from this premise.
Organizational change is the same way. Everybody knows what needs to be fixed in an organization. We've all sat around the water cooler, trading the great idea that would make things better. But these ideas too are only worth as much as a summer breeze.
There is a difference between a good idea and an effective plan for change. Everybody has ideas. Gathering opinions, investigating problem descriptions, looking for synergy and freebies -- there's a lot more to successful change than smart people and good ideas.