Don’t Worry About Sharing Ideas

Ever had an Eureka moment where a brilliant idea suddenly popped into your head? What about when you first discovered that little trick that would help you a lot? Your first reaction on these moments was probably something like: “Man, I’d better keep this secret now, else someone will steal it.”

While this might appear intuitive, locking ideas down is rarely the best thing to do. This mistake comes from the value that people tend to place on ideas. Sure, on the information age ideas are more important than ever. The value, though, is not coming from an idea per se, but rather from the execution and implementation of such idea.

By sharing ideas you will be able to collect other people’s feedback, possibly honing your own assumptions. You will also be helping other people (directly or indirectly), and they will be more likely to return the favor.

There are exceptions for this rule (I don’t want a reader blaming me later when he shares freely a break-through invention instead of patenting it…), but most of the times sharing an idea will only benefit you.

As Howard Aiken used to say: “don’t worry about people stealing an idea. If it’s original, you will have to ram it down their throats.”