Why I Share Product Ideas
Ideas are important — in fact ideas are everything when it comes to the driving force behind every type of progress. Whether it’s social ideas, product ideas, or any other kind of ideas, the most influential people in the world all did that good with their ability to conceive and communicate their ideas.
Well most of my ideas don’t really serve any of those grand purposes. Really, most of them aren’t necessarily practical or what a sane person would call ‘rational.’ However, I do have lots of ideas— almost daily I get very excited about some product concept that pops into my head and then I jot it down in Evernote. The idea then sits as a hastily scribbled collection of bullet points to maybe someday be revisited and possibly created should I ever find the bandwidth in my life. I almost never find that bandwidth.
So why do I horde these ideas? Why do I treat them like gold that, should someone stumble upon them, it would mean riches for them and not me?
Is it because someone else might beat me to punch and build the thing I came up with? Or “steal my idea?”
No. That’s absurd. Why is that absurd? Well I’ll give you three good reasons.
- My ideas aren’t that great. I mean yes, obviously I think they’re good enough to be worth sharing. But my point is that it’s not like I’ve come up with the theory of relativity or a cure for cancer. It’s likely an app idea or a game concept. Sure — with the right execution, it might mean lots of money for some savvy entrepreneur who happens to have the right resources. But the problem there is…
- People that CAN execute my ideas almost always have their own ideas. Why would someone that has access to a capable development staff, designers, and the skills to build a concept into reality be out trawling the internet for stuff to build? They likely have more of their own ideas than they can act on already. They don’t have time to build my stuff.
- Execution is 95% of every idea. Even if I happen to be wrong about that last point, and someone takes it upon themselves to build my idea. What happens? Well if they fail to execute it well, I likely never even know about it. If they execute on the idea successfully and make more money than I can dream of then really it has almost nothing to do with my idea. I believe that to be true because any idea is just the tiny seedling that starts a business or product. It is nothing by itself. The cultivation and choices that are made on ‘how’ to grow that seedling into a giant sprawling tree are the reasons it succeeds. Culture, strategy, business plan, marketing, and on and on all have very little to do with the initial idea and are all vitally important to any success story.
So it turns out, I really have no reason at all to keep any of my ideas to myself.
Well no reason other than to avoid looking foolish, or wasting other people’s time. But I don’t really mind looking foolish. And I know you already waste a lot of your time anyway.
You’re likely still wondering though, “hey — random dude that I’ve never heard of: Why do you think you’re so important that your ideas are even WORTH being heard by anyone else?”
Well I don’t think that. But — I do know that when I jot down an idea in a place only I can see and then never build it or share it, I’ve accomplished only one thing: nothing. I’ve simply wasted my time.
So yes — I share my ideas to indulge my own need to feel just a tiny bit more productive. Read them if you want; share them; be inspired by them; or show your friends for a good laugh because a dinosaur shaped phone made out of cookie dough really is a super stupid idea.
Here’s are the first ones:
Echo — A New Kind of Communication App
Graffiti — A Way to Get More Out of New Places You Visit
About the author:
Robert is an entrepreneur obsessed with invention, 3D printing, and technology. He has founded and scaled companies in social media, and mobile gaming. He is conversational in several programming languages and loves working with truly talented developers and engineers. Robert now spends the majority of his time tinkering on his own projects that he hopes will eventually change the way we interact with technology.
