I work in the world of IP and NDAs and IPOs and yet another TLA. If you have no idea what I am talking about, count yourself among the (very, very) fortunate. Confidentiality agreements all the way, baby. Looking over shoulders, leaning into the table scrunched over as you grab a quick lunch. Hush. That table over there. They might steal this idea.
What if you turned the tables and gave as much as possible away? What if that was your edge (ala Seth Godin's Edgecraft in Free Prize Inside)?
Paul Arden, ex-Saatchi executive creative director and author of It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want to Be advises: Do Not Covet Your Ideas.
Give away everything you know, and more will come back to you.You will remember from school other students preventing you from seeing their answers by placing their arm around their exercise book or exam paper.
It is the same at work, people are secretive with ideas. 'Don't tell them that, they'll take the credit for it.'
The problem with hoarding is you end up living off your reserves. Eventually you become stale.
If you give away everything you have, you are left with nothing. This forces you to look, to be aware, to replenish.
Somehow the more you give away the more comes back to you.
Ideas are open knowledge. Don't claim ownership.
They're not your ideas anyway, they're someone else's. They are out there floating on the ether.
You just have to put yourself in a frame of mind to pick them up.
I have a confession to make.
Before I moved out to California, I was ahem one of those extreme hoarders aka pack rat. I could not part with anything ever. No, don't throw away that issue of Industry Standard, I might need it someday in 2008. Let's just say I had to part with that habit - mind you it's not entirely whipped - when you live in an itty bitty shoebox (relatively speaking) in the Bay Area.
A big part of the letting go of hoarding actually occurred when I started having faith that there was an endless supply to ideas and information and stuff available when and if I needed it. I didn't have to have a warehouse-full stocked up...you know, just in case it all dried up overnight. But you have to have absolute certainty that you can keep tapping into the ether as Arden puts it. If you believe that ideas and imagination and possiblity is finite and this may be your last brilliant idea ever - it well may be.
I dare you steal Arden's idea. It's part of the "nature abhors a vacuum" theory, which I just read referenced most recently in Clayton Christensen's (of Innovator's Dilemma fame) new book, Seeing What's Next. You need to create space - the vacuum - for new ideas. And vacuums are also where opportunities and profits lie.
Johnnie Moore admires Yotel! for sharing "their concept before it's built. Much smarter than the more familiar "don't-tell-anyone-about-my-great-idea-or-they-may-steal-it" philosophy."
Speaking of philosophy, mine is Buckminster Fuller's: Real wealth can only increase.
Yeah, it's radical. Not for the faint-hearted. I'm not advocating you try it unless you believe it. If you buy it, try it. If not, it's not going to work.
Hugh at gapingvoid says: It's what I said in The Hughtrain: "It's not just the product. People have to love the process as well." i.e. It's not what you do, it's the way that you do it.
What if a company let you in on their process - invited you into its four walls? What if the process was the primary product? What if a company shared its ideas openly? What if a company believed real wealth can only increase? What if?
Have you read 'Whatever you think, think the opposite?' It's a coffee-table style book with some good quotations. My favorite:
"most people are other
people...
Their thoughts
Are someone else’s
Opinions
Their lives a mimicry
Their passions a quotation."
-Oscar Wilde
...but wait a minute - that's a quotation as well!
Kevin
Posted by: Kevin Yu | Mar 12, 2007 at 10:42 AM