My idea was stolen! Is there a dark side of entrepreneurship competitions?

We hear it all the time! My idea was stolen!

While fear is natural, but,let us think for a moment,  is it really possible for an 'idea' to be stolen?!

I happen to believe that the fear of stealing ideas might be justified if someone has a proven track record of monetizing innovative ideas, however, in the case of nascent entrepreneurs, that is hardly the case!

And I am not trying in anyway to undermine the intelligence of budding entrepreneurs,on the contrary, I want to confirm that young entrepreneurs are dynamic,closer to market trends, and the 'potential of their ideas' might be very huge.

But,it is important to emphasize that ideas don't create a profitable business- but execution does.And any one who tried business, would  agree that the initial idea usually goes through a  long process of testing the market and changing accordingly in order to grow from being a startup to being a profitable operating company.

Startups don't have facts on 'who is the customer' and 'what is his problem', so, what is it exactly that others would steal in this stage?!

Is it because I have an idea today, that means that all the odds are going against someone else -on the whole planet- having the same idea?!!!

Again, an idea doesn't create a company , but, execution does .

The ultimate goal of a startup -before being a company- is to develop customers. 

"Startups are not junior versions of large companies"-Steve Blank explains, hence, it is fundamentally wrong to think that just because someone has a business idea,then, he has a company already! Blank adds " the entrepreneurs' only mission -in their beginnings- should be to find facts about who is their customer", hence an entrepreneur shouldn't obsess about ideas and instead focus on execution.


In Blank's course 'How to build a startup' , he explains that what a startup needs to do -in its early stages- is to search the market to optimize their idea until they find paying customers, and that is because, startups, often, can't predict in their initial stage where they will be next year because their initial idea would change a lot!

So, does an idea that pops in my head one day, by itself, without the execution, is something of value?! How can someone be so sure that they are the only person in the world who thought about it!!

That doesn't mean that a startup ,will not become a large company one day.But they'll become a success through execution, and customizing their initial idea to the needs of an existing customer.And that is why we find many global business competitions use the business canvass , which specifically helps the nascent entrepreneurs to organize their thinking and to test their hypothesis in real life, in order to answer the question of : who is the customer.

Eventually, the entrepreneur would benefit from the feedback she found through the market testing, which would consequently support her to update her canvas and keep learning from the feedback until she creates a business model that  customers are willing to pay for. After the first group of customers are guaranteed , then, an entrepreneur can start worrying that her profitable business model could be stolen!

Moreover, in the stories of entrepreneurs' that we might have read or heard about internationally or in our local community,  we can easily notice a very clear pattern, where entrepreneurs 'fail' many times before they build a business with a growth potential.Hence, I am very skeptical that ideas create success.In my opinion they don't! but, I am open to discussion  :)

Where good ideas come from

Steven Johnson in his interesting TED-talk (that had more than 3 million views) talked about: where good ideas come from. He discussed how people usually assume that brilliant ideas are a single thing, and something that happens in an illuminating moment, however, what he argues for is that an idea is a network that happens in the person's brain in a pattern that never flourished before. He also adds, "in order for this brain-network to come together, a person needs to put himself in environments where he can network with others in order to develop his idea.

He interestingly adds "we often talk about the value of protecting intellectual property and having secretive R&D labs, but I think there is a case to be made that we should spend as much time, if not more, valuing the premise of connecting ideas and not just protecting them". And he finishes his talk with a rather strong statement "That is how innovation happens. Chance favors the collective  mind''.

So, closing a brilliant idea in a box, does actually decrease its value, because innovation thrives in an environment of sharing.

We have to always remember that no one can turn their vision to reality without the help of others.In the process of hiding their ideas, the entrepreneurs, would potentially be missing out on the rich learning experience that they might have obtained if they opened up, shared, tried, failed and stood up again. The process of failing, learning and starting up again just goes on and on until the entrepreneur reaches his destination- a running, profitable and growing company, and that's what we call determination!