Should you worry about ideas being stolen? Some never share before absolutely necessary, such as when seeking funding. Others speak about their ideas with as many as possible. Ideas do get stolen. Ideas are cheap, but action is not. If you plan to implement your idea, then timing becomes important when openly speaking about it. Those who are first to market can sometimes establish themselves as market leaders, by default of being first.

If an idea is a good one, someone else is going to want to do it as well. However, they will never be you. They might steal your idea and re-create it in some form, but they won’t create it as you would. They cannot steal you. With this in mind, perhaps it is not such a bad thing to speak about ideas. When we do, we enable others to help us. When we speak about our ideas, we may come to gain feedback from others, which can be viewed as early market feedback. People may want to share their network connections, putting you and possible funders together. Such conversations typically begin with, “You know who you should talk to? I have a friend…”. As the entrepreneur shares and discusses with others, they can come to see their vision more clearly over time and to consequently adjust, simplify and hone it. The clearer one’s vision, the greater the chance of the idea coming to fruition or “manifesting” into a tangible form.

A great side effect of speaking about one’s ideas is that, inevitably, a great pitch ends up being developed.

Weighing the risks, speaking about one’s ideas can lead to them being stolen, but can also lead to clarity of vision, the development of an efficient and clear pitch, pre-market feedback and the gaining of new network connections.

Jim Hart