Last night you woke up at 3 a.m. with the best new business idea you've ever had.

You ran to your computer, started Googling similar terms, ran through Technorati to see if anyone was blogging about it, and performed some domain searches on GoDaddy to see if anyone had the name (they always do.)

You went to bed feeling good about your new idea, not finding anyone that had something similar.  You slept like a champion, basking in the glory of your brilliance.

Then you woke up the next day only to find an e-mail sitting in your inbox from a buddy you sent the idea to at 4 a.m.  It's a link to a site that does exactly what you had thought of.

Oh $&*@#! - someone already thought of your idea - now what??

Don't sweat it.  You don't have to be the first one to think of a good idea in order to make a great company happen.  There are plenty of ways to improve the idea and make it work.

Execute Better - Anyone could have sold books on-line, but Jeff Bezos of Amazon did it better than anyone.  Do not overlook the power of good execution.  There are plenty of good ideas that are executed poorly.  You can take just about ANY product category and likely do better than most competitors, if not all of them.

Narrow the Focus - Your competition is looking broad at lots of categories.  Narrow your focus to one category that you know you can dominate.   Determine whether customers care about a big, broad play or just one highly focused play.

Go Head On - Most companies do not handle competition well.  If it looks like there is only one other company in your space, is there any reason you can't make them #2 in short order?  Just because they are the only game in town doesn't mean they can maintain a #1 spot next to your competition.  Maybe they are just #1 because no one has beaten them at their own game.

Give it a Spin - Similar to narrowing the focus, another way to shape your idea is to shift the spin a bit.  NetFlix took an old model of DVD rentals and put the on-line browsing / through-the-mail delivery approach.  Ironically Blockbuster then gave the NetFlix model another spin and allowed you to return your movies the same day to their stores like NetFlix could not.

As I've said before, execution is what makes an idea great, not just novelty.  It's OK if someone has thought of your idea.  The real question should be - "Does the person who's thought of my idea have a better shot at making it #1 than I do?"