Many years ago, I knew a guy who got out in front of a popular diet trend. He was one of the first to popularize it, right at the beginning when it was first taking off.
He had the first-mover advantage, a huge following, and the potential to build a huge movement out of it.
Then he vanished.
While he was gone, another guy took his ideas, almost verbatim, and built a gigantic brand out of them.
Is this scumbag behavior?
Is there a “use it or lose it” law of the jungle in effect?
Here’s another example.
If you talk to accomplished writers of fiction, you’ll hear of what must be a universal experience:
An aspiring wannabe-writer approaches them with “a great idea”. The wannabe is willing to share in this great idea with the accomplished writer, splitting the profits 50/50. All the writer has to do is turn the idea into a best-selling novel.
Q: What do these two tales share in common?
A: A total misunderstanding of where the value flows.
What the accomplished writer knows, and the wannabe-writer does not, is that ideas are cheap.
A pro writer gets a dozen ideas before lunchtime.
The ideas are plentiful.
The constraint is the energy and time to implement.
A writer only has so many productive hours in a day, week, month, and year. Realizing one idea means that 1000 ideas rot on the vine.
Opportunity costs are the No. 1 constraint.
The real value is the ability to spin it out into a story or a novel.
(The level above that is turning the story into IP that can be sliced up into four dozen different licensing deals…)
My old acquaintance had prime position on a good idea, which proved extremely popular and extremely lucrative.
But the idea went under-used.
Somebody else took the idea and put it in motion.
In the economic world of making, buying, and selling, the value of a resource is in the use made of it.
This is true of factories, cars, stocks and options, real estate.
And, yes, your ideas.
Ideas may be the most valuable thing there is in this world. But they’ve got to be put to work if they’re going to matter.
If you’ve got an idea and you want to talk about getting it in motion, hit “reply” or hit me up at [email protected]
Matt Perryman
https://matts.email