How do you sell an idea to an established company?

#1

Post by omghashtag » Sat, May 28, 2016, 8:44 PM UTC

Maybe there's an untapped revenue source for a product that would require little to no investment from the company, and you'd like to suggest it to them while retaining credit/ownership of the idea?

As in, if I pitched an idea to a company, how do I ensure that if they use it, there's an agreed-upon payment structure and they don't just use it anyway and say fuck off?

Re: How do you sell an idea to an established company?

#2

Post by kwikiel » Sat, May 28, 2016, 9:09 PM UTC

Get hired as contractor not saying first your oryginal idea but pitch them improvements on existing process

Re: How do you sell an idea to an established company?

#3

Post by smt88 » Sat, May 28, 2016, 9:21 PM UTC

You don't. I've never heard of this happening.

Re: How do you sell an idea to an established company?

#4

Post by chrisbennet » Sat, May 28, 2016, 9:27 PM UTC

I think it unlikely that you can get money or credit/ownership from them for an idea - at least not without spending money on patents and lawyers to enforce that patent.

Basically, ideas are worthless without execution. Now if you can make a product that performs this improvement you might be able to license it to them. I created and licensed some software to a company once.

Re: How do you sell an idea to an established company?

#5

Post by exolymph » Sun, May 29, 2016, 12:03 AM UTC

Ownership of an idea is not really a thing, unless it's patentable. You have zero leverage in this situation.