How to Build a Better Mousetrap
"Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door." - Ralph Waldo Emerson*
Good news!
I’m about to be richer than Croesus.
Because I have an idea for a better mousetrap.
Instead of the classic wooden snap mousetrap, or those ugly blocks of plastic that glaringly advertise that you have a pest problem, I want to build a good-looking and discreet mousetrap.
I’ve brought ideas like this to life before.
So here we go, let the money flow.
Except…
I’m really not likely to get far with this idea.
Ideas are the easy bit.
Since 1836 people have successfully applied for over 4,400 mousetrap patents to the U.S. Patent Office across numerous exciting subclasses such as, ‘Impaling,’ ‘Smiting,’ ‘Choking or Squeezing,’ and ‘Electrocuting and Explosive.’
It’s by far the most invented device in American history.
The hard bit is the follow-though.
Across nearly two centuries fewer than twenty five of that multitude of ideas have made any money.
"Vision without execution is hallucination." - Jeffrey E. Garten
The Epiphany Myth
We all love the romance of the lone inventor changing the world with their revelatory idea.
We build powerful myths about these “eureka” moments, distilling down the complicated and messy struggles involved in bringing that idea to life into pithy misleading statements.
Newton was not hit on the head by a rogue apple and he didn’t “discover” gravity.
He worked bloody hard for years to uncover a mathematical model that explained gravitation and he did it without being assaulted by fruit.
Charles Townes, the Nobel Prize winning inventor of the laser (which has probably featured in a number of those rodent decimating patents) liked to highlight this by referring to an old cartoon of a beaver and a rabbit standing in front of the Hoover dam. “No, I didn't build it myself,” says the beaver, “But it’s based on an idea of mine.”
The fact is, the ideas themselves are cheap, and the epiphanies are fleeting and abstract.
It’s the execution that matters.
And most ideas fail because people don’t manage to execute.
As Scott Berkun, the author of The Myths of Innovation says, “Many innovators give up when they learn ideas - even with dazzling prototypes or plans in hand - are only the beginning.”
The Execution Gap
The famous inventors we all tell stories about were rarely the first to think of an idea.
They were often the person who was best able to work that idea into a reality.
The lightbulb was independently invented by twenty one separate people, but only one person successfully executed their solution and is remembered: Thomas Edison.
It took him (and his often forgotten team) over a year, and tests of over 3,000 materials, to produce a working prototype lightbulb.
Then it took three more years of execution before it was developed enough to be sold.
This is the true story of invention and you see it time and time again:
The Wright brothers were just one of a huge gaggle of people striving for powered flight. It took them four years to achieve that first 37 meters of flight, and another five years before they sold their first plane.
Edwin Land (and his team at Polaroid) took four years to go from the idea of an instant camera to having a prototype, and another year to get it to market.
Martin Cooper and Motorola went from idea to the first commercial mobile phone in ten years.
James Dyson took five years and 5,127 failed prototypes to produce a functional cyclone vacuum cleaner, then it took another 15 years to successfully launch it on the market.
Malcolm McLean had his initial idea for container shipping 20 years before his first ship sailed.
Even software takes time and effort.
Uber spent a year developing a prototype, another year to launch a premium black-car service and two more years before they pivoted to allowing regular drivers to use their own cars, which required navigating (or sidestepping) massive legal, regulatory, and mapping hurdles.
“Ideas can only really be considered great once they have been executed. And executed excellently.” - Chris Hurst, No Bullshit Leadership
In his book Scott Berkun listed eight innovation challenges to take an initial idea all the way through to a functioning business or system.
His back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that an 8-step process with a 50% chance of survival at each challenge, has an overall probability of success of less than 1%.
50% x 50% x 50% x 50% x 50% x 50% x 50% x 50% = 0.390625%
It’s a similar story if you look at the wider start-up market instead of individual steps.
~10% of potential start-ups survive the pre-funding idea phase.
~10% of those get seed funding.
~20% of those get product-market fit and achieve Series A funding
~25% of those manage to get to scale or an exit.
So a startup (or mousetrap) idea has about a 0.05% to 0.1% chance of success
The Three Phase Challenge
I’d argue that there are actually fifteen steps of challenge, which can be broken into three distinct phases.
The first phase is Invention, the second is Innovation, and the third is Exploitation.
And every breakthrough has to survive these three phases.
NOTE: Invention and Innovation are terms that are often used interchangeably, but they are distinct concepts: Invention creates something entirely new, while Innovation makes the invention useful, usable, and widely adopted.
“Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things.” - Theodore Levitt
Each of the three phases requires a different mindset and over the years, people have used analogies to describe this.
In his 1992 book Accidental Empires, the technology writer Robert X. Cringely used a military framework, classifying the groups as Commandos, Infantry, and Police.
Years later, technologist Simon Wardley adapted this into a model widely taught in business schools, of Pioneers, Settlers, and Town Planners.
I prefer to use the terms Visionaries, Engineers, and Operators.
Visionaries (Phase 1 - Invention)
Visionaries are driven by pure creativity, passion, curiosity and a high tolerance for ambiguity.
They ask, "What if...?"
They thrive in uncharted situations, operating in small, fast teams of generalists with limited resources and minimal structure.
They are comfortable with high failure rates and are energised by disrupting the status quo, but they can become bored once a concept moves from abstract possibility to reality.
Visionaries create the prototype.
Engineers (Phase 2 - Innovation)
Engineers ask, "How do we build it?"
They use applied creativity, grit, and relentless execution to find the best solution for a specific problem.
They thrive in well-coordinated teams of specialists and look to build high-quality customer-focused solutions.
Engineers turn fragile prototypes into products.
Operators (Phase 3 - Exploitation)
Operators are the guardians of the revenue engine, tasked with protecting enterprise value, and delivering enduring scale.
They ask, “How do we exploit it?"
They thrive in industrial, predictable, corporate environments, where processes and planning is key.
They focus on making things faster, cheaper, smaller, more efficient, and just good enough.
Operators turn products into commodities.
If we compare Visionaries, Engineers, and Operators across the four proven psychology mindsets you can see that there are significant differences to the way people think during each stage:
Mindset | Visionaries | Engineers | Operators |
Open Thrives on ambiguity, novelty, and unstructured exploration. | Adaptive Open to scaling ideas, and closed to scope creep. | Closed Protects system stability. | |
Inward Vision-obsessed and can view others as vehicles or obstacles. | Outward Sees the potential in others to build together. | Inward Rule-focused and can view others as obstacles or irrelevancies. | |
Growth Failure is purely data. | Growth Focused on mastery and system effectiveness. | Fixed Relies on proven protocols and repeatable methods. | |
Promotion Driven by vision, ideals, gains, and breakthrough potential. | Adaptive Expands market reach while mitigating organisational debt. | Prevention Driven by risk avoidance, zero errors, and compliance. |
Rare polymaths (those famous inventors) can navigate all three phases, but most people naturally have a single mindset.
Visionaries and Operators have fundamentally opposing mindsets that are prone to clash as a product or organisation moves through the phases.
Operators don’t make for good start-ups leaders and they struggle when sudden market disruptions demand the very adaptability they have spent years optimizing away.
Visionaries struggle when put in charge of steady-state organisations.
Innovation is often a relay race relying on Engineers to bridge (excuse the pun) the gap.
So if you have an idea for a better mousetrap.
Be prepared to think like an Engineer and ready to work your way through the hard graft of innovation.
The world will only beat down your door when you've done the work.
“Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throat.” - Howard Aitken
* His less-succinct actual quote was: “If a man has good corn or wood, or boards, or pigs, to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.”
Hope, J., “A Better Mousetrap”, American Heritage Magazine (1996)
Ridley, M., “How Innovation Works: An illuminating journey through historical innovation and invention”, 4th Estate (2020)
Evans, Sir H., “The Eureka Myth”, Harvard Business Review (2005)
Berkun, S., “The Myths of Innovation”, O’Reilly (2007)
Cringely, R. X., “Accidental Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition and Still Can't Get a Date”, Penguin (1996)
Wardley, S., “On Pioneers, Settlers, Town Planners and Theft”, Bits or pieces? (2015)
