Can You Sell Ideas?
According to Paul Graham, this won’t work. If people could sell ideas, there would be a market for ideas. Is there one? Nope! Ergo, ideas – as a trade good – are worthless.
This is kind of unfortunate, because I have so many of them – more than I could ever put into practice. If there was an idea market, I would have made a fortune already – by sheer sales volume. 😉
But that’s not how this world works.
Actually, with ideas it is similar to starting a startup. You invest in your idea, you don’t sell it. You may also find other people investing in it, sort of, though they usually invest in a startup because they believe in the people starting it: Whether they seem smart enough to come up with a promising idea which they believe in themselves, and determined enough to do whatever it takes to make it into a (market) success.
thinking of …
some experience in office works – Bosses never like ideas nor report of problems (existing or in the future), they just want options of the resolution … So, I can conclude ideas don’t have value, but solutions does
I haven’t go through all the mentioned articles because I think in different approaches with similar topics (ideas – startup business – $$$(successes) etc.). I will go through the articles after I fixed some permalink problem with my blog I mentioned previously.
Looking back my life in the past 40 years, I realize that I am a different boy from others because I used to have (to create) a lot of “ideas” in my mind. The ideas could be:
– dreams of what I wanted, for example, being success or relationship with good looking girls etc.
– insights of things (troubles / needs) will be happened
– invention that will be workable and profitable
I couldn’t help talking with people around about the initial ideas of mine, but it usually created misunderstandings if the ideas weren’t not mature at the time.
Recently, I become aware this was a big problem because I spent most of my time on making ideas or dreaming, so I became lack of time to learn and to build my knowledage in depth from basic and with organized manner.
you mentioned that “If there was an idea market, I would have made a fortune already”. I think:
1. you better make definitions of the idea you mentioned
2. even with a very valid idea won’t create a value and bring success, but a valid operations and business module of the value will do. Bill Gate of great ideas of MS DOS won’t bring success like today, if he was living in China in the 70’s.
3. Now, I used to tell myself, there are many good opportunity (good-looking girls) around (on the street), I better to be well prepared to get hold of them – Focus on my “operations” first i.e.
– knowledge development (languages, math. programming)
– job and incomes
– house works (my woman cooks for me, but don’t clean)
– family and friends
– archives
– sharing … I need to contribute something to the society before I meet god
I have been thinking relationship between ideas and success, I could classified there are 3~4 phases
1. Enlightenment – initial of a idea and be aware of the importance that means to you
2. Resources that bridge you over thresholds (prerequisite) – there are thresholds against your startup, they could be books (for techniques and experience), equipment, environment for operations, qualification, certification, government’s approvals, banks’ trust etc.
3. Applications
– you won’t know if the idea is valid until you apply it in real world
– you won’t be able to get hold of knowledge unless you apply it
– you won’t know you limitation, improvement and alternatives until you work for your ideas
4. Operations
– I remembered a story for child, like a little girl was given some eggs, on her way to home, she think eggs will become chicken which give more eggs … etc, I can’t tell name of the story. The story didn’t tell there are disease of bird flu that kills chicken and mankind. So, we need operations to maintain our ideas ….
That’s all my sharing for today, to-be-continuous …
Patrick, thanks a lot for this thorough and extremely open comment. I really appreciate your openness:
Believe me, I understand you.
However, I didn’t want to say I don’t have methods for dealing with my many ideas in a structured way. I have more ideas then I could “formally” make a definition of, though, so I rather use a sort of a “staged” method.
Some of the things that helped me keep my life “on track” were David Alen’s “Getting Things Done” method, and Barbara Sher’s Book “Refuse to Choose”. GTD is a lot about “operations” (as you call it), and the other one… Well, it’s a real jewel; I won’t reveal more than that not to spoil your leisure. 😉
Nice writing. You are on my RSS reader now so I can read more from you down the road.
Allen Taylor
Nice writing style. Looking forward to reading more from you.
Chris Moran