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No One Will Steal Your Big Idea

cognoscenti.wbur.org

11–20 of 74 posts

Re: No One Will Steal Your Big Idea

#11

Like all grandiose sayings, this one is demonstrably false. Consider the startup we all love to hate, Groupon. Groupon was founded solely on a Big Idea. I think thats why it got so much hate in the beginning, because all it took was that fucking idea and any one of us could have had it. Without Lightbank to hyper-fuel its growth, one of the million knockoffs run by a larger company would have pushed to the fore and d…

yup, gotta agree.

Ideas are like any other valuable thing: a rare few are amazing, some are good, most are meh, and some are wtf? For those people that are good at idea generation, being tacit can be one useful means to getting paid on delivery.

Re: No One Will Steal Your Big Idea

#12
post #11

Like all grandiose sayings, this one is demonstrably false. Consider the startup we all love to hate, Groupon. Groupon was founded solely on a Big Idea. I think thats why it got so much hate in the beginning, because all it took was that fucking idea and any one of us could have had it. Without Lightbank to hyper-fuel its growth, one of the million knockoffs run by a larger company would have pushed to the fore and d…

yup, gotta agree. Ideas are like any other valuable thing: a rare few are amazing, some are good, most are meh, and some are wtf? For those people that are good at idea generation, being tacit can be one useful means to getting paid on delivery.

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Re: No One Will Steal Your Big Idea

#13
post #10

huh? This must be a joke. Do I even need to read the article? I click and there's a picture of Steve Jobs holding up the iPhone? The most stolen idea on the planet, just ask the courts. Not to mention the ipad. Disclaimer, I'm not an apple fanboy. I actually prefer android. If you don't have the legal clout that apple has to defend its IP, then you'd better not take the advice of this article. The whole execution is…

[deleted]

Re: No One Will Steal Your Big Idea

#14

Like all grandiose sayings, this one is demonstrably false. Consider the startup we all love to hate, Groupon. Groupon was founded solely on a Big Idea. I think thats why it got so much hate in the beginning, because all it took was that fucking idea and any one of us could have had it. Without Lightbank to hyper-fuel its growth, one of the million knockoffs run by a larger company would have pushed to the fore and d…

i will blame the headline there. is it now mandatory for every headline to be either none, all, always, never, best or worst?

headline aside, nice article, like "collaboration is the winning strategy — fear is the innovation-killer"

Re: No One Will Steal Your Big Idea

#16
The true fallacy of thinking someone is going to steal "your" idea is in thinking the idea is uniquely yours in the first place, especially if the idea is more of a concept or an entire product rather than something very small like a new feature.

Smartphones were thought up long before the iPhone, web search was thought up long before Google existed, personal tablets were thought up long before the iPad existed, the internet/web itself was basically invented in fiction long before it became a real thing.

I've lost track of the amount of times I've had some grand idea that nobody was doing only to see an announcement months/years later from company XYZ whose product was pretty much exactly my idea, even though I've never publicly shared the idea.

Product/service ideas are always, to some degree, just remixes of older ideas allowed for by current technology. When you have your insight, there are certainly dozens/hundreds of other people around the world with backgrounds similar to your own having vaguely the same idea at virtually the same time. Execution (or in most cases, even bothering to turn the idea into reality) and timing are everything.

Having said all of that, being in stealth mode still isn't always a bad thing because sometimes knowing how you are executing on an idea can be helpful to other people already on the same path as you are.

Re: No One Will Steal Your Big Idea

#17
post #14

Like all grandiose sayings, this one is demonstrably false. Consider the startup we all love to hate, Groupon. Groupon was founded solely on a Big Idea. I think thats why it got so much hate in the beginning, because all it took was that fucking idea and any one of us could have had it. Without Lightbank to hyper-fuel its growth, one of the million knockoffs run by a larger company would have pushed to the fore and d…

i will blame the headline there. is it now mandatory for every headline to be either none, all, always, never, best or worst? headline aside, nice article, like "collaboration is the winning strategy — fear is the innovation-killer"

I still disagree.

Collaboration is the winning strategy? For whom?

The writer forgot to add, "for the strongest player." For the weaker player, collaboration usually means assimilation. This is not always bad, but it must be addressed plainly.

Re: No One Will Steal Your Big Idea

#18
This article makes me want to start a blog section to LaunchSky.com -- just to post this article to it and our signed up beta-users.

Based on the customer survey's we've asked a large group of the beta sign-ups, this is a fairly significant fear in the community. ~42% of responders said they'd be concerned with someone stealing their idea, so we pivoted to build a private sharing feature alongside the community exposure to an idea.

While I agree that there are steal-able parts to ideas and the creation process, the fear behind certain (often unprotectable pieces) are just about as ineffective and productively constricting as anything I can imagine.

Re: No One Will Steal Your Big Idea

#20
Be careful not to confuse IDEAS with OPPORTUNITIES.

With caveats, you can generally be loose with ideas.

Opportunities are a very different matter. Opportunities represent an immediate or near-immediate path to revenue. They are stolen every day.

What's the difference?

IDEA:

Let's make a new toaster oven to sell at Walmart.

OPPORTUNITY:

I just met with a Joe Buyer at Walmart. They need a toaster oven with a digital timer to retail for no more than $59. They are willing to issue a PO for 100K units. They are actively looking for one. If they can see a viable prototype they'll issue the PO and close the deal.

I hope you can spot the difference between the two. Which one would you steal?

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