As I was perusing the November 2011 issue of Popular Mechanics (via the Zinio app on my iPad, of course), I came across a brief item about the British Antarctic Survey and the discovery of some active undersea volcanoes in the South Atlantic Ocean. “New species have been found nearby,” reports the magazine.

I have always been a big fan of space exploration, but over the past decade or so I have become much more intrigued by underwater exploration. It’s not as sexy as the search for alien life or the quest for an answer to the origins of the universe, but it can be just as exciting — and probably have more practical applications in terms of things like health, energy, and the environment. Plus we don’t have to travel for weeks, months or years just to get in a position to make observations.

There are practical implications to this way of thinking that impact us in our businesses and our lives. It is easy for all of us to get enamored with the idea of solving the biggest problems that get the most attention from the media and the public.

But some of the best ideas, the most successful companies, and the smartest life decisions come from not looking at the stars but at looking around us. What challenges and opportunities are within easy reach? Figuring out how to make a battery with longer life may not get the same attention as finding the ultimate cure for cancer, but it may well have more impact on more lives over time.

As a society, it is good for us to have people tacking the biggest problems. And you or I may be the one to do it. But there are lots of great things to be done closer to home.

I have found myself this week spending a lot of time thinking about what is in store in the future. I have been pondering this question from a number of different angles, including business, product, marketing, technology, and more. I’ve even been considering where I’m headed personally when it comes to things like running (do I try a full marathon next year?).

This has led me to a few observations:

The Future is Unknowable. So Don’t Try Too Hard. We can all make reasonable judgments about what is in store down the road for ourselves and our companies. But ultimately we don’t really know what is going to happen, so it isn’t worth getting too wound up about the possibilities, good or bad.

Stuff Happens. The Future Changes. Just when you think you have the full menu of options for the future in front of you, some new event or piece of information will likely crop up that switches up the dynamic. For example, many of my significant career path transformations have come out of left field and been executed incredibly swiftly. 

We’re All Working with Imperfect Information. Because the future is unknowable and facts can change at any time, we’re all forced to make decisions without a full picture in front of us. But so is everyone else involved in that decision-making process, so from that perspective we’re generally on a level playing field (unless, of course, others are deliberately withholding material facts, but that’s a topic for another post).

Sometimes You Hit Curveballs for Home Runs. If you make the wrong decision today, it might end up being the right decision months or years from now. As I look back over the past 5 or 10 years, there are plenty of decisions that in the immediate aftermath I thought may have been poor judgments, but today look pretty fortuitous. It’s all what you make of the course of events.

Exciting Changes Can Be Scary. Scary Changes Can Be Exciting. Since I like challenges, I like change. If it looks like bad news, I often like it because it forces rethinking things. If it seems like good news, I like it because it usually means some sort of growth.

We Overthink the Unfamiliar. I had a great conversation with a fellow entrepreneur earlier this week who passed on some great advice from a mentor. The first time you do something, you spend a lot of time worrying and planning. The second time, you trust your instincts and work more quickly.

So don’t worry too much about the future, but embrace the change that it inevitably brings.

Ideas are a dime a dozen. I know because I have paper and electronic file folders filled with ideas that I have come up with over the years for potential new products, services, and companies.

Good ideas aren’t much more valuable. While some of the ideas on my lists seem clearly doomed, most seem to show a glimmer of light.

What Are Great Ideas?

All Great Ideas Were Once Good Ideas. Great ideas are not born that way. They are good ideas that have grown up. 

Great Ideas Are Good Ideas That Get Attempted. There are some great ideas on my idea lists. But since I never tried to implement them, they never became great for me. But as I reflect back on the list, there are plenty of ideas that I have had that others have come up with on their own and implemented quite successfully.

Great Ideas Usually Aren’t That Unique. Most often an entrepreneur’s great idea was thought of by many other people. It’s what gets done with the idea that matters. As I walked the halls of the Defrag 2011 conference this week, I heard lots of conversations among bright people about  interesting ideas. I have heard those same conversations at other conferences in the past. Some of the ideas turn out to be pretty good, but often they end up getting implemented by others before they became great.

Great Ideas are Good Ideas Well-Executed. The secret to success is in the execution. A good idea well-executed beats an excellent idea never-executed (or executed poorly). We don’t remember the good ideas that failed because we rarely hear about them. We do remember the good ideas that became great through successs.

How Can You Make Your Own Idea Great?

Just do it. If you never try it, you’ll never know if it was truly great.

Be persistent. Some of the greatest ideas in history were failures at first. Refine the ideas to achieve greatness.

Blend  your ideas. If you’re old enough you will remember the phrase “You put peanut butter in my chocolate.” Do that with your own ideas. The combination of two good ideas often leads to one great idea.

Don’t try too many ideas at once. Lots of your ideas are probably great. But if you do them all at once, execution will suffer and they’ll all be stuck at good not great.

As entrepreneurs, we often get wrapped up in the little details. Clearly, details matter. They drive execution and most companies rise or fall based on how they execute on an idea. A mediocre idea well-executed will typically outperform a great idea with poor execution.

But whenever I come to Defrag, I am reminded of the importance of thinking big. Yes, the little things matter, but so do big things.

Think Big Thoughts

Great companies make both incremental and significant changes for their customers. Every day you probably spend time on those incremental changes. But don’t forget to take time to explore bigger ideas. What type of company are you really? Take Google. Most people would describe them as a search company, but a lot of smart folks would tell you it is really an advertising company. Expose yourself to new ideas and other big thinkers (like those at Defrag) to stimulate your brain in new directions.

Think Big Picture

Where does your idea fit in the grand scheme of things? Does it disrupt your whole industry or just a small piece of it? How could you disrupt your own company by thinking about the big picture? How do your customers use your product or service? What other tools are your customers using? Could you do something to better integrate with their other activities to be more effective and sticky?

Think Big Goals

You and your team probably make progress by breaking things down into manageable bite-size tasks. Lots of project management tools help you take a task and break it down into infinite subtasks. That’s cool. But think about what some really big goals are. Don’t be satisfied with setting achievable goals. Or even “stretch” goals. Think about what you really want or what you could actually achieve if all the right cards fell into place. I’m not talking goals that are almost certainly unachievable (you’re not going to get younger, for instance), but know what your biggest goals are — and then align your other goals to help you get there.

Think Big, Be Big

I realize I sound like a motivational speaker this morning. Perhaps it is lack of sleep. But the fact is that if you think big you are more likely to get big. Don’t get so focused on small that you lose sight of the larger things. If your ideas, your vision, and your goals are all big, that’s the path you will follow.

I attended a great pre-conference dinner last night in Boulder, Colorado hosted by T.A. McCann, founder of Gist, where we talked about how tech entrepreneurs can have a greater impact on legislation and regulation, especially in Washington, DC. Naturally, with my background, that was a topic I had a lot to say about. And would have had a lot more to say if my voice were not failing me due to a nagging cold.

In any case, VC Brad Feld and Dean of the Colorado University Law School Phil Weiser are quite passionate in their desire to see better policy come out of our elected officials. They both zeroed in on a few specific issues, including software patents and the Protect IP legislation moving through Congress. Though not present, Fred Wilson‘s presence was felt as another blogging VC who has taken an increasingly active stance on policy issues.

There was a lot of constructive conversation around the issue, though we left it far from resolved. But one of the great benefits of Eric Norlin’s work on the Defrag conference is that it brings together smart people who come ready to discuss thorny issues like these.

Why are Tech Entrepreneurs Frustrated with Government Policy?

• Tech entrepreneurs don’t have an organized voice in Washington. Sure, there are groups that sympathize with us on particular issues, but we don’t have our own association to represent us in the halls of Congress and the Administration.
• As doers, entrepreneurs don’t understand the often plodding pace of policy. As founders of startups, we find problems and tackle them head-on. We don’t do an elaborate dance like politicians do.
• Most entrepreneurs are not politically active. Let’s face it, when we’re busy solving problems, building companies, and creating jobs, there’s not a lot of time to get involved in the political fray. So while many of us may have the ability to connect with our policymakers, we often don’t.
• “Leave us alone” is a tough message to win with in Washington. Most entrepreneurs would prefer government to stand aside and not get in the way of entrepreneurial progress. But our elected officials like to be seen as “doing something.” So often we need to find ways to fight bad policy with less bad policy rather than what would probably be best in some cases: no policy.
• There’s not enough information about specific policy implications out there. With no organized Washington voice, we’re left to get information on an ad hoc basis. That means we may not all be singing from the same hymnal on important issues which diminishes our impact.

How Can Tech Entrepreneurs Have a Greater Impact on Policy?

In recent years, we have heard much talk of services like Facebook, Twitter, Salesforce and others being “platforms.” The implication is that they are much like operating systems like Windows, Linux, or OS/X where developers can build applications on top of them.

And that’s true, at least in a technical sense. The problem is that now companies are building not just applications based on these web platforms, but also their entire businesses.

From today’s Wall Street Journal:

In the past, entrepreneurs might have built a competing social network or made use of Facebook as a tool to drive traffic to their own sites.

But now, companies like BranchOut Inc., a professional network, and Yardsellr Inc., a social e-commerce application, have emerged that rely entirely on the social network’s users for their business. More such ventures are expected to pop up this year.

There is a big, and often unrecognized, difference between building a company around software that sits on top of an operating system and an application that relies on a web platform. Computer operating systems get installed on hardware and even if the developer makes a major change to that operating system, old software can still run on old versions of the operating system. Nobody comes and forces you to uninstall old versions from your computer.

If you are building an application, and ultimately a business, on top of a web platform like Facebook, Twitter, and Salesforce the same cannot be said. Those web platforms can completely disable your application and shut down your business with absolutely no notice. The only thing restraining them is public outcry and customer complaints – a thin protection indeed.

I am in no way advocating that you don’t take advantage of web platforms and even build applications that rely on them. But no business should base itself entirely on a web platform. This may be a quick route to short-term popularity and perhaps even a fast acquisition, but it is a miserable way to create a sustainable company. No business should ever depend solely on the good favor of one vendor, one customer, one platform, one employee, or any other irreplaceable component. Diversification is a must.

So go ahead and build your platform-based web application. But figure out how it becomes only one part of your strategy and not the only one.

The other day I found myself telling someone that a company I know of has “a product that demos well, but it doesn’t work well once you buy it.” We all know the type, right? At the extreme end are some of the gimmicky items you find sold on TV infomercials. Some of them actually do work well, but a whole lot of them look a lot cooler in 120 seconds or 30 minutes than they work in your own home.

But any of us who are in the online software arena know that it isn’t a phenomenon limited to late night TV sales. And it isn’t just about physical products. Software as a service can suffer the same fate.

As an entrepreneur, my goal is always to build a company that puts out a product that sells well and works well once the user rolls up her sleeves and starts using it regularly. But as with most things perfect balance is rarely possible. Personally, I know I skew toward products that work well because I am fundamentally more of an ideas and product person than a marketer.

That just means I have to put special focus on designing products that sell to compensate for my inherent bias.

Others are just the opposite. I know some folks who have a phenomenal eye for marketing and apply that to their product development activities. I know that those folks will show me a product that demos amazingly well. Often, though, the long-term efficacy the product may not match the glitz and glamor of demo day, however. So they know they need to focus on the long-term functionality in a special way.

Without balance, you have a serious business problem. Products that demo well but don’t work up that same level are destined to have unhappy customer word of mouth and high churn rates (if they are subscription based). Those that work well but demo poorly suffer from the “build it and they will come” fallacy. Without customers to sustain the business, it doesn’t matter how good the product may be.

If you’re an entrepreneur, developer, or marketer, just make sure that you know what your own leaning is and take steps to compensate for whichever side you are weaker on. That means focusing your own energy but also partnering with others inside your organization – or outside – to make sure you achieve the balance necessary for long-term success.

In communications and in business, too many people get hung up on measuring for the sake of measuring. Just because you can generate all sorts of metrics with impressive numbers and charts doesn’t mean that what you’re looking at will really make a difference in your ultimate success.

I tackle one specific element of this debate over on the CustomScoop blog today where I explore Ad Value Equivalency, a way that many communicators are asked to measure their success. My title gives away my point of view: “Don’t Get Stuck on Wrongway AVE.” You can click on over to see my full argument.

Take a little time to think about the things that you are measuring, being asked to measure, or asking others to measure. What do you do with that data? What does it tell you about your project or business? Why does it matter? Spend your time measuring what matters, not what looks good.

I had a conversation yesterday that spurred me to think back to the “old days” of the World Wide Web. You see, I’ve been at this game long enough to remember Yahoo before it was at Yahoo.com. Most of you probably don’t know that it used to live at http://akebono.stanford.edu.

In any case, I took a dip into the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine (a great tool for peeking at what web sites looked like on various dates in the past) to check out what some of my own early efforts online looked like.

I thought I might share some of my nostalgia with you — and then explain why it matters.

My First Web Site

My site itself no longer exists, but NCSA Mosaic, the organization that gave birth to the first popular web browser (which would later become Netscape), lists my site called CyberPolitics in a September 1995 list of “What’s New” on the web.

My First Web Site Listed in Yahoo

Ironically, the ad at the top of the page showing my CyberPolitics site when the Wayback Machine archived Yahoo on December 20, 1996 was for Townhall.com, a company I would become CEO of a few months later.

My First CEO Gig

Here’s what Townhall.com looked like around the time that I left my role as CEO there. It sure was green!

My First Blog

I started my first blog in 1999. It was called PrimaryScoop and it chronicled the presidential primary campaigns of 2000. It would serve in a roundabout way as the inspiration for CustomScoop.

The First CustomScoop Web Site

On September 1, 2000, not long after we launched the company, the Wayback Machine captured the first look we had for our web site. I especially like the big dip in the “p” to tie in the tagline — classy!

So there you have it. A brief trip down memory lane. What’s the point you ask? Besides a bit of nostalgia, I often find that the past often gives you good ideas for the future. It’s not worthwhile to linger in times gone by, but to check in to what you and others were doing years or decades ago may provide valuable insight that helps gel your thinking today.

I get a lot of email. And a lot of that email reflects pretty poorly on the sender.

Some of the emails I receive wouldn’t even make the cut as amateur ransom notes. They are often laden with misspellings or typos. Frequently they fail to make a succinct point. They routinely seem to be disorganized thoughts. And they regularly get sent without the author paying enough attention to important details that would have eliminated the need for the email or at least changed its content.

It seems to me there are several fundamental causes for poor email:

1. Mobile devices. I love being able to email while I’m on the go. But it leads all of us to take shortcuts that result in less than ideal messages. We overuse abbreviations and slang. We forgo proper capitalization and punctuation. To make up for this, many of us (myself included) include an automatic disclaimer in the email signature confessing to having sent from a mobile device, hoping that begs forgiveness in advance from the recipient for anything that feels as if a two year old may have intercepted my email account.

2. Atrocious writing skills. Far too many professionals lack the ability to write properly. Not a week goes by that I am not stunned by the utter lack of writing skill possessed by someone sending me an email. I’m not talking about the ability to write an artful speech, a compelling editorial, or a riveting novel. I just want people to be able to write using a rough approximation of correct grammar, spelling, and composition.

3. Carelessness. Inattention to detail turns even good emails into bad ones. When failing to perform rudimentary proofreading, an email author leaves the impression of not caring about the recipient. It takes but a few seconds to scan a typical email to ensure it doesn’t have red squiggly lines under key words and that the sentences read in a coherent fashion.

4. Laziness. Many of the emails in my inbox could be eliminated if the sender took a moment to even briefly research something before hitting send. Questions could be answered. Points could be made more clear. And the email could be made more relevant to the recipient.

5. A rush to judgment. Don’t forward an article without reading and understanding it. Don’t hit reply with a bombastic or indignant response without taking time to digest the meaning and purpose of the original email.

6. Under-utilization of technology. Your email program likely has a spell checker. It may even perform grammar checks. Take advantage of these tools. There’s no good excuse for most typos these days given the amount of technology we have built into our daily tools to save even the worst writer from himself.

7. Over-reliance on technology. The flip side to technology is that it can make bad writers worse — and even make good writers look bad. If one relies purely on technology to solve grammar and spelling issues, one will never understand the proper way to write. In addition, some modern “auto-correction” features do their level best to butcher even the best prose. I have found myself so frustrated by the bizarre auto-correction functionality of my iPhone that I have turned it off periodically because I would prefer to manually edit my fat-fingered typos (or even leave them in place!) rather than accept “corrections” that completely distort my original meaning (sometimes in unintentionally embarrassing ways!).

8. Misunderstanding the audience. When you write — an email or anything else — it is important to understand who the reader will be. If your text is not tailored to that audience, your message will likely fall flat. If you’re pitching a story, know what the recipient likes to write about or report on. If you’re asking for something from a supervisor, understand what makes them tick. If you want to sell something, know the needs of your target.

9. Lack of respect. All too often emails end up coming across as snide and sarcastic not because of actual writing skills, but because of actual intent. The disrespect may be intentional or it may be a result of subconscious thought, but either way it is important to understand that the email reflects on the sender. By all means be brief and direct, but make sure you demonstrate respect.

10. The misconception that “it’s just email.” I frequently hear people dismiss poorly composed email as insignificant. After all, “it’s just email.” Baloney. In today’s business environment your emails are your most frequent means of communication with your supervisor, direct reports, colleagues, prospects, clients, vendors, and more. The impression that your email leaves does not reflect on the devices you use, but on you personally. Remember that the next time you hit “send.”

We’re all guilty of some of these email shortcomings from time to time. There are occasions where I get lazy and my email looks a bit more like something written by e.e. cummings than someone who actually understands where to find the shift key. And we all do things in a rush on occasion.

The better your email quality, the better it reflects on you. If you don’t fancy yourself a good writer, take the time to improve that skill. The ability to write clearly and succinctly will take you farther in your career than your colleagues who still can’t string words together properly — in email or otherwise.