Who owns my idea?
April 19th, 2011While reading a great book by the title Where Good Ideas Come From (Steven Johnson) I ran across a quote from Thomas Jefferson about ownership of ideas.
If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it
The most important aspect of being an entrepreneur is enjoying the continuous evolution of ideas. Entrepreneurship is really not about creating ideas out of thin air, but it is the art of combining, and morphing ideas in ways that make them more valuable or solve a specific problem that could have a realizable economic value.
But I have often contemplated the question of who owns an idea. And as I have gone through my different experiences I learned what Jefferson has expressed so succinctly, which is that no one does. An idea is only yours as long as you hide it. The moment you pour it into a product, or a website, or a design or even a discussion, is the moment it becomes the property of everyone else who touches it and they will immediately start building their own ideas on top of it.
Our natural instinct is to treat ideas like natural resources that are mutually exclusive across people. But breaking out of that natural emotion is what allows you to truly be open to the continuous exchange of ideas which is the fuel for any real entrepreneur.