Do you give away ideas?
My friend Steve Poland does it (well, I might add). My newly married buddy Kevin Leneway does too (though I wonder about him at times
). I don’t know Colin Dowling, but I know he does it and for other people at times. And then there’s Seth Godin, and his post yesterday entitled Big Ideas
, which is all about the charity of giving away ones ideas.
Ack! The blasphemy of it all! And yet, after a really nice conversation with my very close friend Joseph Cizek the other day, I’ve realized that in conjunction with Seth’s sentiments, this is exactly what I need to be doing. I need to learn to give away what I have been collecting in my “Ideas File” for the past several years. And more importantly, “the hard work of actually executing” is something I am working very hard to incorporate into my very being.
So, do you give away ideas? Do you give money to pan handlers? Do you block ads on the web sites you visit?

3 Responses to “Do you give away ideas?”
Posted by: Kevin - 09/12/2007
Do it!!
Posted by: Techquila Shots » ADVICE: Give Away Your Ideas & Take A Load Off - 09/12/2007
[...] [via James Kirk] [...]
Posted by: Colin Dowling - 09/20/2007
There is a tendency to think that “the idea” is where the money is, so giving it away means you are giving away the future chance of money. Nothing could be further from the truth. Aside from the fact that no matter how well you enunciate it, no one will understand your idea the way you do, it is also a certainty that no one will execute it in the way you envision. To take it away from the startup mode and give a different example, Kanye West could meet me in the studio and say “Here is the idea for this track…here are the lyrics…here’s the music……” and I would record it and it would stink.
Give away every idea you have; people will often toss in snippets of input you would never have thought of. And the idea that they will take your idea, execute it exactly as you would, and leave you out in the cold is infinitely small and worth the tiny amount of risk in order to foster good discussion
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