Source: Lean Lunch: Support Will Make or Break Your Idea w/ Ismail Elshareef - MOVES THE NEEDLE

By Aaron Eden on July 28, 2014

We chatted with Ismail Elshareef who is in charge of Edmunds.com’s New Cars, Used Cars, Car Reviews and Pricing | Edmunds Open Platform. Having two decades of experience in engineering, Ismail led Edmunds.com to open their APIs to third party developers. He is a promoter of meaningful innovation, and he’s a frequent speaker on web performance, API, and innovation. With him, we discuss APIs and how to get big ideas through in large organizations.

Some of the highlights include:

Why you need to hone the story surrounding your idea
Why communicating your idea in ways that others understand is essential
What to do once your idea gets verbal approval inside your organization
Why implementing a new idea in a large enterprise is often harder than implementing that same idea in a startup
Why you need to validate your idea as fast as possible to see if there’s demand for what you’re offering
Why feedback is so important for your idea to materialize and to succeed
Why your initial partners should be people that understand the value of what you’re offering
Why criticism and detractors means that you are doing something right