Over and over, I keep encountering people who prioritise the ‘idea’ stage of a business project or initiative. They’re so secretive and their biggest fear is that their idea will be stolen before they can bring it to the market. These people are so paranoid that they eventually maintain the idea at a very elitist level and do not really allow it to get the robust treatment it needs because they stay in such an enclosed silo.
I’ve been asked to sign NDAs for ideas which were so poorly thought out that if I were given 20 minutes, I could flesh out a plan many times better. And this is not to say that I’m more intelligent, the presented ideas were just so bad that any random guy walking off the street could come up with it in 5 minutes.
I don’t get it. Why are people guarding their ideas so jealously? And from what I see, these people either don’t even get around to taking their idea to the market or even worse, they bring a very superficially planned out concept which falls flat on its face despite the initial investment.
I’m not saying that the idea is not important. But it’s maybe 5% of the entire piece and the foundation doesn’t even necessarily have to be a good idea. You need to constantly customise to where your market and locality is, based on real feedback from real customers, and many times, the final product will come out completely different from the initial idea.
Ideas are a dime a dozen and I sincerely believe that whatever I can think of, hundreds and thousands would have thought it already somewhere around the world. So the moment I come up with what I feel is a winning idea, I start talking about it from whoever I can talk to in order to get feedback from different sources.
I get tonnes of negative feedback about how it won’t work but I pay attention most to why people don’t think it will work and try to come up with solutions for it. And there are those who believe it will work but want to suggest improvements or pitfalls to consider. Finally, I love to go to business mentors whom I respect and try to get their feedback.
My point is that I’m not protective about my ideas at all. Most people have better things to do with their time than to steal an idea and do the hard work of implementing on their own. Once in awhile, you might hit a bad egg but it’s not worth missing out on all the direct feedback and refined ideas which come about as a result of hashing it out with as many people as you can.
So next time you come with an idea, please don’t act like you’re guarding it with your life, revealing little tidbits here and there like you don’t trust anyone. That idea is honestly worth nothing unless you are able to implement it and demonstrate that the plan is robust enough to survive the market. Thinking that you’re the only one intelligent enough to have that idea is arrogant and most assuredly false.
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