Coupla Jerks, Part IIb: Great quote

Currently, I'm reading Planet Google, a pretty interesting read so far.

In light of my previous post on the foundation for ideas, I thought I'd share this excellent quote from the book with you. It's from Kevin Scott, a software engineering manager who used to work there.

Ideas at Google do not burst forth from the heads of geniuses and then find their way unimpeded to huge audiences of receptive users. Rather ideas emerge, are torn to shreds, reformulated, torn to shreds, prototyped, torn to shreds, launched to internal users, torn to shreds, rebuilt and relaunched, torn to shreds, refined some more...and launched, whereupon they are torn to shreds by bloggers, journalists, and competitors.

My take - away? Don't be afraid of letting your ideas get torn to shreds.

Some good ideas have to die

I know you’re probably sick of hearing about Google. I am a little bit too. But I did enjoy this description of how they get ideas, provided by Social Media Influence. Apparently, Google gets so many good ideas from its employees that they have to kill a bunch of good ones. I think that’s an important point. Once you start having a lot of good ideas, you will not be able to take action on every single one. You will need to learn to let go or you’ll be spread too thin. When you’re working on too much at once, everything will get a crummy implementation – if it gets one at all. Believe me, I know this from experience.

It’s better to sacrifice a few good ideas than your reputation for getting things done.

Are you getting too many good ideas? Which ones should you let go of?