In today’s day and age it seems strange to be talking about the ownership of ideas. That’s not yours, that’s mine. Really, can one person hold an idea and what is actually achieved by that?
For example, if someone comes up with a similar idea, aren’t we benefited by having a conversation with that person or group about how we could make both ideas awesome, rather than deciding which idea is more valid?
Although some love the glitz and glory that comes with being the one behind the great idea, to give an idea life sometimes we need to relinquish some of that control, we need to hold it lightly, allow for different perspectives and provide others a meaningful voice in the discussion.
A lone nut who keeps an idea to themselves is oddly enough still a lone nut. For in the end, it takes a village and sometimes the most important thing we can do is let it go.
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Whose Idea is it Anyway? by Aaron Davis is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Cory Doctorow explains that ideas are like germs that often involve a little luck to come into fruition.
I remember writing about this challenge of blank slate beginnings a few years ago when two colleagues got embroiled in an argument about originality.
Thank you Austin for sharing. I love this reflection on ideas from David Lynch:
This reminds me of an interview between Kevin Parker and Rick Ruben in which Parker talks about the challenge of capture ideas when they come to you. Ruben shares how Neil Young always responds to ideas no matter how rude it may be. This excerpt captures Young’s thinking:
Ruben then gives Parker permission to stop what you are doing and capture the ideas when they come.
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