Have you ever seen a product and thought to yourself “Why didn’t I come up with that idea?!?!” It happens to all of us. During a party in San Francisco last week I struck up a conversation with someone who happened to have a friend in common. The friend of ours had written a book and had gone on to develop a business targeted at those people who had read their book.

The girl I happened to be talking to complained that a lot of the content in the book happened to include suggestions and tactics that were completely obvious. As she went on she turned to me and said, “I could have written that book!” One of the most annoying things about a lot of incredible business ideas is that they are completely obvious.

The friend that the girl mentioned was now generating tens of millions of dollars in revenue for their business off of something that was completely obvious. It just goes to show, becoming successful in business has nothing to do with brilliantly complex ideas. It has everything to do with executing on completely obvious ideas and solutions.

As Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, says, “Great ideas are Obvious in retrospect”.