Where do good ideas come from? Not from any moment of genius. Not at stroke of midnight during full lunar eclipse. Not taking entrepreneurship lessons in a ivy league business school.

Ideas can come to anybody anytime anywhere. But you Gotta do something about it. Thomas Edison said ideation without execution is hallucination.

To ideate is simple – start local. It could be solving a problem that bothers you – product or service. It could be your job , your home, anything you are engaging with on a day to day basis. You have the broad solution to solve it but no-one listens to you. Just do it. Do it yourself. Ideas don’t have to be complex – Amazon and books, uber and cars, air bnb and hotels are just big ideas but simple at the same time.

Anybody who’s been under a shower has had an idea. Not my quote – inspired by Nolan Bushnell. We always ponder upon random thoughts bothering us and looking for solutions when under a shower.

Entrepreneurs are people who take the idea forward beyond the shower moment. It’s very easy to say I thought of that or I could have done that. It’s all futile if you don’t do anything about it after your dry yourself.

Having a risk appetite is important to be an entrepreneur. You don’t have to be a genius, MBA, programmer etc. All you need to have is an idea, risk appetite, persistence, passion and optimism.

When you are thinking of ideas and noting down, asking friends and family – don’t get easily discouraged by it. You need to have a lot of optimism. Sometimes good ideas are hidden in a pile of bad ideas and it all belongs to you. You need to live the bad ideas to find the good ones. But you got to develop a process to eliminate the bad ones easily.

Last year had I had the privilege to meet eminent futurist Peter Diamandis. He said something profound – if you want build a billion dollar business, your idea should impact a billion people or more.

Buy hey- don’t get discouraged by the number. Your idea doesn’t need to impact a billion people straight away. Start small and slowly build an appetite for it. Most visionary entrepreneurs started simple before their businesses became conglomerates. They all learned and figured it out on the way. Persistence, passion and optimism is key to see it through.