ADVICE: Give Away Your Ideas & Take A Load Off
By Steve Poland • September 12, 2007
Seth Godin has a post up about giving away ideas and how execution is the real hard part. It’s the truth.
Personally, giving away ideas is like therapy for me — or rather, a necessity. My Mom has had the perfect analogy so far for me — it’s as if I’m in the bottom of a well, and it’s filling up with water (”ideas”). If I don’t scoop the water (”ideas”) out of the well (”my mind”), then I’ll drown. And that has happened — I find myself being pulled by 3 ideas that I’m “saving” and I can’t focus on any one of them! Then it’s torture for me, because I know I can’t execute on all of them.
Trust me, I still have tendencies to hold onto ideas — I have a few at the moment that I haven’t shared for months, because I’m “saving” them. How do you, as a reader of my blog, know when I’m saving ideas? When there are post droughts — because I’m drowning in the couple ideas I’m really excited about that I think could be “the one”, don’t share them, and they block the rest of my creativity.
But all this sharing has really helped me to better identify opportunities, in my opinion. It also brings out some great comments on the idea posts that makes me (and others) realize something that I/you weren’t even thinking about.
So those ideas you’ve been holding onto the past 6 months that you’re never going to execute on anyhow, write ‘em out — you’ll feel a lot better. Hell, you might even find someone as interested as you are in it (if you find that there really is an opportunity for the idea), and you may find your future business partner!
If you’d like to share any with my readers as a guest post, email it to me — I can’t guarantee I’ll post it, but feel free to send my way.
[via James Kirk]
Comments
4 Responses to “ADVICE: Give Away Your Ideas & Take A Load Off”
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Thanks Steve. 6 months? Hell, I’ve got some I’ve been hording for years! And I just cleaned out my file and had to 86 several that had either been done by someone else, or that technology advancements had simply made obsolete. No more, however. I think I’ve a handle on what drives me and my creativity, and as you’ve so elegantly stated in your post above, I need to start scooping the water!
So instead of me IMing you my ideas, can I just login to your Wordpress and post them myself?
I’ll keep them in draft mode, until you approve them. I can think of a few right now…
And I’m donating $1 to TechquilaShots and emailing you the above photo, sans-watermark. Merry Christmas
The well analogy works well for me. It is often the stupid or trivial ideas that fill your mind when traveling, sleeping, watching tv. Capturing them in a notebook or a blog stops them dominating the thoughts, and can entertain others.
I often hope that someone will take the idea and implement it so that I can become a customer. That won’t happen if the idea stays in my head. And, given that most ideas fail, I’d rather someone else put the work and risk in. Lazy huh!
My thinking goes something like this… “This product/service is really needed and if I can just get it going or get someone else to invest in it, I can make lots of money.” Then, nothing happens and years later, the idea has been done and someone else has made the millions anyways. (And probably others have spent millions because it wasn’t executed properly).
Is there an Idea ThinkTank that I can join to submit my ideas for brainstorming and development; where companies will actually pay for the fleshed out ideas? Perhaps this is a business idea in itself… the ThinkTank takes a percentage of revenue and then distributes it to all members who helped problem-solve it.
I just want to make money on these thoughts (even if it is just a half-percent of revenue).
Seriously, companies could really benefit from something like this… I think I have a great idea for 3M… anyone know someone who can make something happen there?
Thanks for letting me share… I will continue to share these if anyone is listening.
James