Why You should Tell Everyone Your Ideas
If you are an entrepreneur, you understand the pressure to succeed, the trials of being autonomous, and the triumphs that come with taking risks others will not take. With this accumulated pressure, autonomy, and risk come a natural desire to do everything right and to do it all by yourself. Here is the catch — we are all human and we are naturally terrible at everything. You may read that line again and wonder exactly what I mean by that. I will rephrase myself for clarity. We are inherently bad at doing everything. With that said, we can do a few things really well and that is all that matters.
A logical action to take in a situation where you are uncertain of your next move or do not have the resources at hand should be to seek out someone that has knowledge in the given area and can enlighten you on the subject matter. However, some people have a major problem with this logic. We hold our ideas near and dear; the very thought of another ambitious entrepreneur stealing our idea makes our bones cringe and heart melt.
Generally in the idea generation phase, entrepreneurs define a problem in their life. They also create a potential solution around this problem. Now here is a plot twist — tell everyone your idea.
Are you still there? Did you just have a mini heart attack? You should tell everyone your idea because if you do not, you will likely be forever be stuck in the idea generation phase. This is the stage where the entrepreneur has clearly solved a problem in his or her life, but does not know if they have solved a problem in another person’s life. Often times, the idea generation phase is where the majority of ideas fail. Naturally, the majority of ideas should fail at this point. In fact, nine out of ten companies do fail in this phase. However, let us be clear. Failing is beneficial at this stage for many reasons. One of these reasons is that the money it costs to launch an idea is a fraction of what it could cost to follow a flawed idea into the ground. This also happens to be an opportune time to pivot, tweak, or stop altogether.
When an idea solves a specific problem in your life, it is not necessarily something that just anyone can replicate.
Innovation lives in solutions that solve problems beyond your sole reality.
Written by Alex Grant and Jillian Kilnvex