So Your Great Idea Got Rejected. What Are You Going To Do About It?

Should you accept the rejection and stop trying?

Your idea was rejected. Criticized. Dumped on. You were told to give up.

I have yet to find anyone who likes to have their ideas rejected. But if you want to succeed in innovation, you have to put yourself and your ideas out there which means you will get rejected. You have no other choice. The alternative is to avoid rejection and criticism which translates into 100% chance that your idea will never become a reality.

To set the proper expectation, your ideas will be rejected far more times than they will be accepted. In Silicon Valley, there are entrepreneurs who talked to 100’s of VC’s pitching their ideas before they got one to fund it.

In my experience, the first indication that you may be on to something great is when everyone is calling you and your idea crazy. If Elon Musk and Dean Kamen have people criticizing their ideas and calling them crazy, how can you expect anything less about your ideas?

Why does rejection hurt so much? As humans, we like to be liked and when the rejection is about something personal such as our creativity and ideas, it hurts. We take it personally since the idea is the output of our personal hard work and…