Business is product.

What does that mean though? First and foremost, it means that business is not ideas because ideas without action is not product. Ideas alone are simple mental masturbation and until they are written down or acted upon they have no physical form, no point. They cannot be product. Ideas can become product if they are patented, copyrighted or otherwise written down and protected legally, but then they are no longer simply ideas.

The greatest idea in the world won’t matter if it’s not acted upon.

Business is product.

What else could this mean? Well, it must also mean that the idea created is sold. Why? Because to be a product, someone needs to buy it. An object that is not sold or purchased is simply a rock, a oddity, perhaps even a piece of eccentric art (albeit, I’m sure someone could debate that art itself is not art unless someone other than the artist recognizes it as such, perhaps by purchasing it.)

Again, the greatest idea in the world made material is not business if no one wants it. You can make a machine that in 50 years will change the world, but if no one now understands it or can use it, it’s not a business. It is not a product.

Business is product.

Now here is where I start to split hairs. Product isn’t just a sale. It’s enough sales that the product can be manufactured as more than a one off. This doesn’t mean that business cannot be an art business, it means that the product in an art business is the artist herself, not the art. The purchasers who support it are buying her output, not her individual pieces. In the end, she’s the product.

In a similar fashion, a great idea, made material, and sold to one person, cannot be a product. It is a prototype, a trifle, an artifact, however it is not a product, it is not business.

When you create a business, the hardest thing to come to terms with as an academic or someone just coming out of school is that business is product. You need to not only have a great idea that you can execute on, but you need to be able to sell it, and not just once, but repeatedly, to many people. Create a product that may not last the ages, but will last long enough to pay the bills and help materialize the next product.

Business is product. Plain and simple.

Now go and build it.

KJR