You have certainly already experienced this situation: you are at a dinner party and one of your friends explains to you that he has a great idea that will revolutionize the market, that it is dynamite, that he is going to become rich, etc. You see him again 6 months later, and he again has another idea that will make him a millionaire and that is sure to be a hit. And a year later, he's still saying the same thing...
We all have that kind of personality around us who talks a lot, who certainly has a lot of ideas, but who doesn't find the time or the energy to develop them.
It is not so much its formulation that counts as its implementation.
This situation, which I mention every time in an intrapreneurship course, illustrates well where the richness of an idea is located: it is not so much its formulation that counts, as its implementation. And if you are one day at that dinner when you hear him again put forward one of his revolutionary ideas — and you like it — feel free to “steal” this idea, or at least to be inspired, if you feel capable — unlike him — of taking action and developing it.
Do you have emotional states? Offer him a little something in your new business. Is it a work of art? Don't feel too guilty: know that there is a chasm between the initial idea and the one that will end up on a canvas. His idea is likely to be modified 100x by your work and its confrontation with reality!
“Ideas Are Shit, Execution is the Game”
“Ideas are shit, execution is the game” says the famous Gary V. In other words, ideas are worthless. The only thing that counts is the ability to turn them into reality. Probably one of the greatest lessons of any intrapreneur training.
Having ideas is not what makes a creative person or an intrapreneur.
It makes a huge difference: creativity belongs not only to those who have ideas, but also to those who know how to capture and transform them. An innovation is even an idea transformed into a business. An example? The Facebook case, as it is often presented, especially in the movie “The Facebook”: we see Mark Zukerberg drawing very strongly on the idea of a social network for Harvard University, which was inspired by the Winklevosses brothers. They asked him to work for them. Zukerberg would have “stolen” their idea since he developed it for his sole benefit. Certainly. Whether the facts are true or not, Zukerberg will remain the one who developed facebook. And maybe that's what matters the most.
In the process of innovation and creativity, the same is true: it is certainly very positive to have thousands of ideas per second, but it is worth better be able to develop a few. It requires work, a lot of work.
The phenomenon of innovation clusters
There is also another phenomenon: stealing a peripheral idea. The economist Joseph Schumpeter talks about” clusters of innovations ” when a major innovation marks a break enough to spread others. From the invention of the wheel to nanotechnology to the printing press, revolutionary innovation has always been followed by a multitude of technical advances... sometimes recovered by others. This is how James Watt, who perfected the steam engine, was very happy to patent peripheral inventions of which he was not the author, but which interested him, in order to appropriate them!
If you don't “steal” ideas, someone is at risk of stealing yours
In his book Steal Like an Artist, and on his blog, author Austin Kleon demonstrates that an idea is rarely original and that it is often the intersection of several sources. It is a form of collaborative ideation, an essential point for creativity in business. In itself each idea is worthless, but It is the accumulation of collective ideas that can start to become something. An essential point when talking about intrapreneurship.
Austin Kleon invites his readers to “steal ideas” and “save them for later”, to put them down in black and white in a notebook. Now you know what you need to do: start by buying a notebook.
- My creativity podcast on Majelan
