Whatever your discipline or the industry in which you work, you have likely thought of a truly innovative idea at some point in your career.

Rather than putting that idea into practice and creating something memorable or valuable, however, you may have let it sit on the sidelines for a while, or thought it wasn't all that great or that you would wait for the next big opportunity. Hey, it's happened to all of us.

But guess what? The next big idea or opportunity likely isn't going to just present itself to you. If you are one of the lucky .0001% of the business population who actually is sitting on the next big idea, congratulations! We look forward to hearing about it.

But if you're among the rest of us, understand that there are a lot of really good, somewhat-smaller ideas that never get put to use.

(A good analogy: There are very few home runs to be had. But there are a lot of doubles. And, sometimes, what you think may be just a double can turn into an inside-the-park home run.)

I'm not advocating that you abandon the search for a big idea; rather, I'm advising that you think of the potentially great ideas you have had in your career and then consider why you passed on them.

Take Control of Your Ideas Today

The ability to make something remarkable happen with your big, innovative ideas is invigorating—and, more important, very possible.

Think of things you have thought of doing before; everyone has a passion for something—a cause or idea that keeps you awake at night, but in an exciting, motivating way. The hard part is turning that passion into a working initiative, since it takes more effort to do something new than what you always have done.

As marketers, we have an advantage. We are often charged with coming up with creative initiatives that tap into a target audience's passions. But how do you tap into your own career passions in a way that drives your business's goals while also driving your professional and personal goals?

That can be a difficult balance to achieve, but here's an example based on personal experience. I began a project in late 2009 to create a custom magazine, published by my employer, Epic Advertising, for the online-marketing, online-advertising, and general digital-business industries called Winning the Web.

The magazine—a print publication to provide thought leadership about digital businesses, without an ad sales model—was quite a departure from our core business.

Putting Your Idea Into Practice

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mike Sprouse is the chief marketing officer of Epic Advertising (www.epicadvertising.com).