Does that ever happen to you? It happens to me all the time. Yesterday I read about the idea of having a ‘Guest’ application on a mobile phone such that you could offer your phone to someone else to use (temporarily) and they would log in as a guest and make a call or do whatever they needed to on their own account and not be able to get into your account. I realize that it won’t be long before everyone has a smartphone but sometimes batteries die, phones get lost or don’t work so having this as an option in the form of an application is a great idea. It seems so obvious to me and caused me to wonder why I didn’t think of that?

Several years ago I wrote a post on how I thought there should be an iPhone EZ pass application – http://wp.me/pJX7l-9L – and BTW I didn’t and still don’t have an iPhone. I would now add that it should be a smartphone application for all platforms (Android, Blackberry if they last). Good idea but I’ve lately been trying to find a way to make it happen and have been stymied every step of the way when it comes to contacting people at EZ Pass – which has been nearly impossible. If it was easy it already would have been done right?

So my conclusion is that the answer to ‘why didn’t I think of that’ can sometimes be answered in realizing that the idea is only part of the process and successfully implementing an idea is most often more difficult than thinking it up in the first place.

If I have learned anything from creating http://www.yourcover.com is that good ideas don’t always translate into good businesses – at least not right away – and even if they do it will take time as it has with YourCover which I am happy to say is now a very successful business. And even if they do translate into good businesses the road to success is will be long and filled with potholes that we do our best to avoid. However I find myself on the side of the road from time to time fixing the damage done when the pothole cannot be avoided.

But I strongly encourage people to not answer the question ‘why hasn’t it been done already? Before they’ve tried actually doing it. Even if other people thought of it, putting an idea into action and making it happen requires more than ingenuity. The idea is only the beginning and the hard work then follows. What happens to me is that I think – someone has undoubtedly already thought of this and there’s a reason it has not been done. I realize that is a pretty poor excuse for not at least exploring an idea to a greater degree.

Some time ago I had an idea for a smartphone mirror application – something that would look like a compact-type mirror. Sure enough when I looked I found one on the Android system (but not for Blackberry as far as I have been able to determine) http://bit.ly/wrPbwp. The question I should ask myself (and you should think about asking yourself) is – ‘Why didn’t I think of making it happen?’