Some day, and that day may never come... I may call upon you to do a service for me. But er... until that day, accept this, as a gift.
Don Vito Corleone, the Godfather via Nico G.
I often hear people saying: Well, I had the idea for Ebay (or Amazon, or Google or...), too. Sometimes people tell me their business ideas secretly - fearing that Google or anybody else could steal it (aka NDA).
My personal experience tells me also that science is such a fearful place. Occasionally, you meet Professors that claim that somebody stole their idea and published the idea faster than they could.
Therefore many people hate sharing. Developing stuff in secrecy. Alone. Not exchanging. And often loosing at the end.
But the truth is:
1. Many people have ideas. Most likely the exact same ideas as you. Ideas often tend to arise at the same time at different places because they were inspired by other ideas.
2. Having an idea means just that: Having an idea.
So. Why do some people succeed and others fail? Simple. It’s all about the execution of ideas [1]. Ideas are everywhere. But people that excel at implementing and making ideas successful are rare.
This insight has some nice side effects:
- Don't feat that anybody will steal your idea. If you know your idea and where to go it is virtually impossible to be copied. You are the idea and the driving force behing it. You are the unfair disadvantage [2]. Think of Chinese car manufacturers copying German cars. They are failing and they will fail a long time until execution becomes better. But then the german car manufacturers will be again lightyears ahead.
- You CAN enter a crowded market and succeed by scratching your own itch. If you execute better than your competitor you can and will win. But execution is not that easy. Think of Amazon. A supersimple online selling website. Nothing special. No genuine idea. Why are they successful? Simple. It’s execution.
And know what? We are standing on the shoulder of giants after all.
[1] http://sivers.org/multiply
[2] http://blog.asmartbear.com/unfair-advantages.html