How To Vet Clever Ideas Without Giving Them Away?

Rival writes "As an inquisitive and creative geek, I am constantly coming up with 'clever' ideas. Most often I discover fundamental or practical flaws lurking in the details, which I'm fine with. As Edison said, 'I haven't failed; I've found 10,000 ways that don't work.' Other times, I discover that someone else has beaten me to the idea. I'm fine with that, too. At least I know that I've come up with a great idea, even if I'm not the first. There are times, however, when I can find no flaws with an idea and nobody else seems to have thought of it. I'm not conceited enough to think my idea is genius; I just assume that I'm not knowledgeable enough to see what I'm missing. In these times, I often want to ask a subject matter expert for their thoughts. On the admittedly long chance that an idea is genius, however, what is the best way to ask for another's insights while mitigating the risk of them stealing or sharing the idea? Asking a stranger to sign a contract before discussing an idea seems like a good way to get a door closed on my face. What are your experiences and suggestions?"

Comments

Ideas want to be public

[alain94040]

Ideas are a dime a dozen. What matters is confronting your idea with real world feedback and you'll be astonished by the results (read this for more on keeping your idea confidential: the great startup idea that I can't reveal yet).

Guy Kawasaki gave one really good suggestion to test your idea: convince a woman. It sounds stupid and insulting, but what he really means is that it's too easy for geeks and tech lovers to fall in love with a geeky idea. Presumably, women are more grounded and will tell you why your idea is not practical.

Finally, regarding confidentiality: don't worry about it so much

Re:Ideas want to be public

[Shakrai]

Guy Kawasaki gave one really good suggestion to test your idea: convince a woman

Dude, the guy is asking his question on Slashdot. The odds that he knows any women or has the guts to talk to them if he does are slim to none.

Now if you'll excuse me, the microwave upstairs just beeped. My hotpockets are done!

Re:Ideas want to be public

[gad_zuki!]

Exactly. One of the worst traps you can fall into in professional life is to believe ideas have worth. Sorry, but they are almost worthless. Even a good implementation is borderline worthless without the proper business processes including marketing and advertising.

I've never heard of a uber-secretive guy making it big in the business world. The "I have a genius idea, but dont trust anyone" is the sign of an amateur and/or someone too lazy to learn to code. There's no shortage of people out there who just know their iphone idea will make them a millionare. Its a delusional and self-serving belief.

The guy who does make it is the one who learns how to implement it or at least is trusting enough to hire a real pro without a draconian NDA to do it. This person also understands the business processes needed to promote and support the product.

Re:Ideas want to be public

[cbeley]

Guy Kawasaki gave one really good suggestion to test your idea: convince a woman

Dude, the guy is asking his question on Slashdot. The odds that he knows any women or has the guts to talk to them if he does are slim to none.

Now if you'll excuse me, the microwave upstairs just beeped. My hotpockets are done!

Why does it worry me that that was modded +5 INFORMATIVE!

>_>

Re:Ideas want to be public

[Jane Q. Public]

Lots of "uber-secretive" people and companies have made it in the business world. Microsoft, Apple, Edison... not even the tip of the iceberg.

As for ideas being nearly worthless, you are just plain wrong. Ask the guy who invented the burp-tank for radiators in automobiles. He knew it was a good idea. He applied for a patent. And he took it to EVERY major automobile supplier in the world, trying to sell it. Every one of them turned him down.

And, the very next model year, every one of those manufacturers were putting burp tanks on their radiators.

And by the year after that, the inventor had sued 7 companies, won 7 times (for an average of $1,000,000 in each case), and had 12 more suits pending...

All over one idea. Oh, ideas can be very powerful indeed. His problem was in being in a hurry, going to all those companies, and thereby giving his idea away. Sure, he won many millions in lawsuits, but lots of that went to his attorney(s). He could have made even more in the long run simply by being patient and -- eventually -- making sales.

Re:Ideas want to be public

[mdwh2]

Most inventions are not simply "ideas". I do not know what a burp-tank is (and Googling doesn't seem to help) - was it a case of someone saying one day, "I know, let's put a burp-tank into cars"?

Consider, it's a bit like me saying "I know, I'll invent a time-machine". And then not having a clue how to do it. Ideas are cheap, it's actualling managing to do it - to solve the problems in the way and so on - that counts.

Now yes, to be pedantic the process of solving problems involves lots of little "ideas" along the way, but I'm not sure that this is what is being discussed here - a single "idea" on its own is still pretty much worthless.

Having said that, yes I do concede that ideas can be worth something, but that's only a result of our patent system. Just because we have a broken patent system that awards people millions just for thinking something first, and then allows them to prevent others from doing so, doesn't mean that those ideas are inherently worth something. Indeed, the fact that they have to be propped up by an artificial legal system of patents suggests that ideas are alone aren't worth much at all.

Re:Ideas want to be public

[B'Trey]

What brilliant ideas did Microsoft or Apple have? Microsoft was more lucky than anything else, and used mostly someone else's code to succeed. Apple didn't do anything there weren't dozens of other people trying to do. They just did it better. It was execution and implementation, not brilliant ideas. Edison might have had a few brilliant ideas but most of what he's known for weren't his ideas. He didn't invent the light bulb. In fact, he bought the patents from others who'd been there before him but weren't able to make it practical. See here. He created the first commercially practical lightbulb, and he did it based upon thousands of hours of trial and effort. Many of his other inventions have similar histories. It isn't some brilliant idea that leads to success. It's implementation.

As for the inventor of the burp-tank, several minutes of Googling turned up absolutely nothing. Unless you can provide some evidence, I'll assume that it's apocryphal.

Re:Ideas want to be public

[Fulcrum of Evil]

In point of fact, at least 2 of those 3 people were first among many: newton invented calculus, but so did liebniz. Einstein came up with special relativity, but it was hardly isolated. Basically, my point is that the myth of the lone inventor is exactly a myth. Your ideas are frequently the 'next step' after what's already happened. Execute and try to be 6 months to a year ahead of things and you'll do well.

Re:Ideas want to be public

[KingMotley]

A burp tank you probably know as the "overflow tank", or "coolant reservoir".

Re:Ideas want to be public

[mgblst]

Why does it worry me that that was modded +5 INFORMATIVE!

Because his hot pockets were indeed done. It was very informative, as we were all sitting here wondering when they would be done.

Help us out...

[JDSalinger]

What ideas did you have? This will help us make suggestions.

NDA

[TheSpoom]

You're looking for a non-disclosure agreement. No method other than a contract has force of law behind it. That is, if you're using an untrusted stranger in the first place. There's something to be said for asking friends, even if they may not be giving you a completely unbiased opinion.

In other news, you do come across as kinda arrogant here ("as an inquitive and creative geek..."). Everyone has ideas. You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake.

Re:NDA

[mdwh2]

I agree that an NDA is the right tool here.

But the problem is, who would be willing to sign one, unless there's something in it for them? They're the ones offering their advice, yet they get nothing in return - they can't use the idea, after all. Worse, even if they honestly had the idea, or a similar one, if they ever use it, they're now at risk of being sued.

I've (anecdotally) heard this with companies, when people send in demos/etc - the story goes that a lot of the time, they chuck them in bin. The last thing they want is being sued, because some random guy claims that their new product is similar to some idea that he sent in...

The OP said "Asking a stranger to sign a contract before discussing an idea seems like a good way to get a door closed on my face." and I think basically he's right. People are only going to sign an NDA if they're actually going to be working with you to deliver a product.

Re:Ask Slashdotters

[thomasdz]

They will find flaws

Your sentence is missing a period at the end. Also, you should be clearer about who "They" are although it can be assumed that it is "Slashdotters" as mentioned in the subject of your reply.
Also, your Slashdot ID (457709) is too high.

Re:Prepare to be bought out...

[Shakrai]

What's wrong with being bought out? If your idea is good and your business plan is decent then odds are that you can set it up in such a way that you can retire with the proceeds from being bought out.

Friends of mine got into the ISP business back in the day before it was even on the radar of $Monolith_Company. $Monolith_Company eventually bought them out. They've since spent their days traveling the world and working because they want to, not because they need to. What's wrong with this outcome?

Faux stupidity is the key

[Chris Burke]

What I do is I pitch a modified version of the idea where several key components are blatantly impossible, stupid, and possibly illegal. Then I pitch it to my friendly neighborhood geek and ask for his advice. They'll start ranting about how retarded my idea is, but I'll keep goading them and say "Okay, but imagine if we could fix that, what else do you think?" Knowing how geeks are amenable to abstract hypotheticals, and love to refute things in a thorough point-by-point fashion, they'll keep going on and on about the rest of the design too. I'll pretend to take notes the whole time, but in actuality I'm just seeing what they say about the real parts of the design. But when I depart, they're left with the overall impression that my idea was retarded and useless. I get my feedback, and they're none the wiser!

Anyway, that irrelevant nonsense aside, I'm busy working on a high performance V-8 hemi engine powered by babies. I'm having some troubles with the baby pump getting clogged by babies, and also my valve timing equations could use some tweaking. Any automotive engineers want to help me out with some constructive criticism and proprietary engine timings? Thanks!

Re:Faux stupidity is the key

[eldavojohn]

Anyway, that irrelevant nonsense aside, I'm busy working on a high performance V-8 hemi engine powered by babies. I'm having some troubles with the baby pump getting clogged by babies ...

That's absurd, everyone knows that kittens have a higher Joule per liter ratio than babies. Do you know what the incubation time on a baby is? Nine months! Compare that to the three months tops on a kitten. And you only get one or two babies per baby producing mother. Kittens come in litters, litters equal more fuel. Burning babies in an engine!? What a preposterous idea!

You obviously haven't thought this out! Now if you can get your hands on some panda babies or endangered snow leopard, then you'd be in business!

Ideas aren't worth anything

[basementman]

Ideas are worth absolutely zilch. Any of the 6 billion people on earth can come up with your idea, and probably have. What is valuable is the execution of ideas.

So my advice is to pick one idea that you like and execute on it. You'll probably find out your idea wasn't that good after all and fail. Do this another 10 times or so and you'll finally get one idea that works. Stick with that one. Good luck.

Re:Ideas aren't worth anything

[Grishnakh]

And sometimes you could do nothing wrong. Atari should have lead the way with games consoles not the Japanese who have only copied everyone else and to this day all the jap consoles are based on nVidia, ATI, intel, IBM chipsets (all N. American) This was through no fault in the inventor, it was corporate corruption, and crappy business practices.. You also need a bit of luck.

The Japanese in general are a good case study in how to properly run a business, unlike American companies. The Japanese certainly didn't invent cars either, but they listened to the right people and figured out how to make companies to build some of the highest-quality, best-value cars on the planet. One notable figure in Japanese business history is W. Edwards Deming, an American who taught many Japanese businesses his ideas for running companies and improving quality control using statistics. American companies completely ignored him (though his ideas were used successfully in WWII for producing ammunition in the US), but the Japanese listened, and applied his ideas. He was a bit of a celebrity over there because of his contributions. Even after all these years, however, those of us working in American corporations are still stuck with idiotic management paradigms such as MBO (management by objectives) which Deming correctly derided.

The lesson here is that you don't have to be a genius to recognize a good idea and to run a very successful business. You just have to work hard and make good decisions (and not make stupid blunders), something that many American companies seem to have a big problem with, as seen by the melt-down in the American automakers recently.

Friends?

[Monkeedude1212]

You know those people you know you can trust...

When you say "Don't tell anyone about my great idea..." and they DON'T?

Yeah those are great people to talk to.

Just put together a proposal and try to find $$$.

[aussersterne]

Don't worry about someone "stealing" your ideas. They don't make money by stealing ideas, they make money by funding other peoples' ideas. A lot of money. They don't need to steal anyone's ideas. If you keep it to yourself, they will be perfectly happy to fund two dozen other people who share their ideas, and to make a killing doing it.

Nobody is that interested in ideas; ideas don't make all that much money, believe it or not. Execution makes the money. If it's a good idea, lots of people will be happy to pay you a comparatively small amount (that well may seem huge to you) for the privilege of bringing it to market. They don't steal ideas; that would be killing off the golden goose. Venture capital and other similar interests don't want the ideas to stop coming to them, which is what would happen if they actually stole ideas.

Same thing with publishing and creative works. When I was younger and working on my first books, I was very wary of publishers. I hated to discuss a manuscript. Everything I sent was plastered with copyright notices and I would be sure to send myself a sealed certified copy first with a postmark date on it and then file it away in a safe deposit box. I was that sure that my prose was precious.

Now I have the better part of a dozen books on the market and I've been through the process a few times and I know much better. The publisher isn't interested in what's in your book. They're not impressed. They've seen tens of thousands of manuscripts. It's no crown jewel to them, no matter how good it is. They just want to know whether or not they can sell it. If they can, they're perfectly happy to pay you the royalty and rake in the dough.

Ideas people often make the mistake of thinking that we live in a world of ideas, in which ideas are precious and he who has them rules. In fact, we live in a world of employees and middlemen, most of whom are perfectly uninterested in ideas. With or without your idea, they'll continue on their merry way to be successful by paying for ideas from someone and turning them into products.

If you don't get over your fear, what will happen is that they'll continue to make money, continue to pay other people for their ideas, and you'll continue to have nothing but your great ideas that nobody knows about. Just put them out there. Talk about them as much as you can. That's the way that you broaden your network of contacts, potential funders, and potential buyers to the maximum extent possible.

Don't worry

[flaming error]

"Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats." -- Howard Aiken

Irony Can Be So Ironic (Massachusetts Edition)

Convince a Stoner

[tobiah]

If he understands and digs it, it's been done or is fatally flawed. If he stares at you blankly, maybe you're on to something. Best part: he's guaranteed not to accurately disclose or competently act on your idea!

Don't worry about it

[neapolitan]

Exactly. People overvalue the concept of "idea" and undervalue the concept of aggressive business positioning, development, marketing, capital, and a lot of, well, work.

I was at Harvard when facebook was "born." I was persistently skeptical about the whole thing, as the concept was not new *at all*, and friendster was reigning supreme, which I kind of thought was a silly fad. I was subsequently astounded over the years how facebook has taken off. (I am still astounded.) But, had the founders listened to me, or saw that their idea was "taken," it would have gone nowhere.

That being said, I wouldn't give a highly established potential competitor research data that you have gotten to get your idea off the ground. Despite my words, I also hold a few patents, but these are mostly defensive positioning and required by my corporation.

Nebulous "ideas" have an insignificant chance of being "thought of" already. What you need to do is get honest feedback about the barriers to implementation, then just go and do it!

Re:Don't worry about it

[mdwh2]

Facebook is a good example - if someone travelled back in time and gave me the idea of Facebook 10 years ago, would I now be a billionaire? Unlikely. Firstly I've got to write the damn thing - even if it's within my skills, I may simply not be bothered to, and for many people, it would be beyond them. But on top of that, there's all sorts of factors, such as the details of the implementation, as well as marketing, as you say.

The most obvious point is that the idea of social networking wasn't new when Facebook appeared - it'd been around for years. There've been loads of less successful sites before Facebook, so the idea alone is pretty much worthless.

On a related note, this is what irks me about the "million dollar website" story - the story is spread as if the idea alone is what made him a million, and it's a tale that people love to tell, as it props up the myth that an ordinary person can make a million, just so long as he has the right idea one day. But you never hear the real story of how that website became a success - how it was advertised, how it was picked up by the media who gave him free advertising, whether it was skillful marketing or just luck. We've all had these "get rich quick" ideas - whether they succeed or fail is often little to do with the idea itself. There are many other factors.

There aint no such thing as a free lunch

[Rix]

If you want people to sign contracts, pay them.

If their advice isn't worth paying for, it's not really worth having anyway.

Ask a lazy person...

[Jeff Carr]

Ask a lazy person, or even better, a serial procrastinator. They may want to steal your idea, but will never get around to it.

Re:You're not a /. geek!

[Anonymous Coward]

your microwave isn't in the same room as your PC

Mom said no microwave in the basement, and that's that!

Or there's the other alternative

[Hojima]

What I would do is find someone who's well acquainted in the field, then tell him your idea in great detail. If it's a bad idea, nothing lost, if it's a good idea, you can threaten to slaughter his whole family.

Re:Or there's the other alternative

[sincewhen]

This will work even better if your invention is a great way to slaughter his whole family!

Re:File a provisional patent, in the USA.

[darkmeridian]

It's not that simple. Be aware that when you file a provisional patent, you have one year to file a full patent application in order to get the earlier filing date of the provisional patent. Moreover, if the invention is in use or one sale during the one-year period after the provisional filing but before the non-provisional filing, you may lose the right to ever patent that subject matter.

Furthermore, the provisional patent has to enable the inventions claimed in the following non-provisional filing. This is very important. You can't file a jumbled provisional app then claim everything later on.

Be really careful of the in use or on sale bar.

gad_zuki is dead on.

[digitaltraveller]

Im the founder/ceo of a funded tech startup.
Let me share some advice I learned the hard way:

Share your great ideas promiscuously as possible to attract collaborators, even in highly specialised science and engineering fields.
Otherwise your ideas will never gain traction and actually happen, and you will always be a dreamer.

In the unlikely event that someone steals your idea, take it as a compliment and move on to the next great idea.
Great ideas are easy to come up with. It's the execution that's the tough part. Startups are 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.

Unless only 1-2 people in the world understand what your talking about, pretty much anything you communicate verbally is not going to have
much value to a competitor.The vast majority of the time secrecy is extremely toxic and harmful to getting an idea off the ground.