BIG ideas get all the attention by the media, bloggers, journalists and the like because Big ideas, like anything that is coming out of Google X, have the possibility to create waves of change for society.

Businesses that want to call their latest and greatest invention the next best thing should be thoughtful about what it is they are promoting. Though we can all tell BIG from SAME, there is no shortage of entrepreneurs calling their latest venture The New Thing; frankly most of the time it isn’t.

So, to determine whether or not something is really The New Thing we can use the following criteria: it’s new, surprising and radically useful.

The more precise one is about what “innovation means and looks to us”, the more focused the efforts will be and thus the more interesting one becomes. From a business relevance standpoint, beyond the media coverage one gets, thinking and doing big has other benefits as well:…