Ideas have creative value, but no financial value.
Execution is where all financial upside resides.
Sometimes you have a great idea. A game-changing idea. An idea thats worth a billion dollars.
So you start thinking how to make it a reality and you quickly realise that you don’t have sufficient capital, technical expertise and/or time.
Its at this point you’re faced with 2 choices:
- Be paranoid – start fearing someone will steal your genius idea. Insist on NDAs before sharing. Start fantasising about selling your idea to a giant corporation that is so lethargic they would never be able to come up with your idea.
- Share – start telling everyone about your idea. Share on Twitter, on Facebook, tell the world.
Option 1 is a dead-end filled with losers.
Option 2 carries the small chance that someone who can make your idea a reality will love it and rope you in, letting you share in the financial upside. There is a much bigger chance someone will take your idea, run with it, make it a success, make a tonne of money, and never invite you on his jet.
Option 1 deprives the world of your idea and leads to you muttering, “I thought of Facebook long before Zuck”, whilst sipping a late harvest semi-sweet.
Option 2 gives you a small shot at being part of a bigger story, and at the very least gives the world a chance to benefit from your idea, even if you get no financial upside (or credit).
It doesn’t matter whether you are a part of your idea’s fruition into reality. It only matters that the world benefits.
Even if you fail to directly benefit, giving your ideas away for free is just another way of paying it forward. Karma.
What goes round comes round. Keep giving and eventually you’ll be gifted an idea that you can make a reality.
Then you can decide whether to invite the original ideas-man on your jet.