When Novelty Beats Practicality: A Lesson Every Young Entrepreneur Should Learn

Fifteen years ago, during my days at IIT Madras, entrepreneurship was still a fresh buzzword on campus. We pitched startup ideas as part of our course, and while the excitement was high, the understanding of execution was low.

Back then, novelty was everything.

Ideas that were simple, feasible, and capable of making money were often brushed aside as “too ordinary.” Meanwhile, futuristic concepts — walking on Mars, artificial hearts, teleportation-level tech — received applause, even if they were decades away from execution.

Novelty beat practicality every single time.

The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same

Fast forward 15 years, and I recently found myself at the BITS Pilani campus, this time not as a student — but as a jury member for their startup fest.

To my surprise, nothing had changed.

Students with simple, scalable ideas — the kind that could be executed within months — were overlooked.
Startups with a clear go-to-market plan, some operational hustle, and a path to revenue barely got attention.

But ideas like signal-less drones or Bluetooth-enabled satellites?
Those received admiration — even when there was no proof of concept, no feasibility plan, and often a reliance on a professor’s connection at ISRO or DRDO.

Again, novelty triumphed.
And again, practicality was ignored.

Ambition Is Good — Dependency Is Not

There is nothing wrong with ambitious ideas. The world needs dreamers and researchers pushing boundaries.

But for a startup, especially an early-stage one, ambition cannot replace execution.

If your idea requires:

• A government tie-up
• A special approval
• A big scientific breakthrough
• Or a specific mentor’s network

…then your dependency becomes your biggest bottleneck.

And bottlenecks kill momentum — the one thing a startup cannot afford to lose.

15 Years of Building, Failing, and Learning

After a decade and a half of hustle, pivots, experiments, small wins, and tough failures, here’s one truth that has become impossible to ignore:

The simpler the idea, the faster it can be executed — and the easier it is to scale.

Execution doesn’t just beat novelty.
Execution beats innovation, imagination, and inspiration — every single time.

Most businesses in the world that succeeded did not succeed because the idea was entirely new.

They succeeded because the founders:

• Simplified the problem
• Executed relentlessly
• Scaled consistently

Novelty sparks interest.
Execution builds companies.

Worried About Being Copied? Here’s the Truth.

Entrepreneurs often ask, “But what if someone copies my idea?”

My response: Everything you use in daily life is a copy of something else.

If we removed every “similar idea,” we would all be:

• Using the same phone
• Driving the same car
• Brushing with the same toothpaste
• Shopping at the same store

The winner is never the one with the original idea.
The winner is the one who executes better, faster, and smarter.

A Message to Young Entrepreneurs

If you are starting up or dreaming of starting up, take this with you:

👉 Don’t fall in love with the novelty of your idea.
👉 Fall in love with its execution.
👉 Make it simple.
👉 Make it practical.
👉 Make it profitable.
👉 Make it real.

Because the world doesn’t reward the most imaginative idea —
it rewards the one that gets built.