That was my Idea!
Have you ever been in that moment when you come up with quite a brilliant idea that you’re sure no one else has ever had? You might have been occupied by the thought of it for a few days and maybe even came up with it’s detailed design. As you were thinking of your selling strategy, you decided to tell someone about it or to simply Google it. To your great surprise you realize that that idea has already been *stolen* from you.
I’ve experienced this many times and it doesn’t seem to get any less surprising every time it happens. It always seems as though somebody was more creative with the design or had more thought through functionality or simply got to your idea first. Even though this can serve as a stumbling block for some people, this was actually kind of the case for several very famous people as well.
As you may know, Bill Gates was working on a project for IBM and needed to essentially create an operating system within a segment of time. After some failed attempts, he ended up buying the rights to Gary Kildall’s operating system, modified it, and presented it to IBM. That was the foundation of Windows as we know it.
Tesla was founded by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning in 2003, but it is Elon Musk who is associated with and credited for the astounding Tesla cars. He saw their project, liked it, and heavily influenced it and the company's vision and direction. The car became what it is because of his financial involvement and leadership.
As far as I know, Facebook wasn’t “copied” off of anything, but Mark Zuckerberg had a variety of social sites that existed around him. By being aware of what was around him, he learned many things that would and wouldn’t work in a social media company and went on to create the most successful social platform ever.
I find a good lesson in these three examples: You should be very mindful of the world around you and should learn from others’ successes and failures. Chances are that some ideas that you have can be quite profitable because they have something that your forebears missed. So don’t be discouraged if you see that someone “stole your idea,” but try to see what they may have missed.