Would You Kill For a Good Idea? Would You Die For One?

“Give me Liberty or give me Death.” The words of revolution that have inspired me and fueled my activist passion since I first read Thomas Paine.

However, not all ideas are equal. Better put, not all ideas are to be judged by the same metric. KNEE JERK ALERT…Please note...

So I ask you….

Last week, I was awarded LinkedIn’s Idea of the Day… again. I am truly honored to have made this cut multiple times, and it got me thinking about ideas in general and what they really mean to us.?

More specifically…

Would you “kill” for a good idea?

Would you “die” for one?

We tend to throw these metaphors around—as we should—in a tongue-in-cheek way (at least most of us do). We wouldn’t really kill, nor do we really want to die, for a good idea. We certainly wouldn’t be willing to make the ultimate sacrifice in our commercial world where ideas become business…nothing wrong with that…in fact, it’s critical…but as I said…perspective. Rather, we use these throwaway idioms to signify our passion and the inspiration we get from exciting new ideas…even in a commercial application.

BTW…I distinguish Ideas, in this context, to be business related as opposed to ideas that are philosophical or thought-related. The difference between thinking about a new way to hail a taxi ride vs. building on our Democracy…make sense???

I once wrote about “Falling on Swords” and considered various scenarios that might or might not be worth the ordeal. The bottom line was that very little is worth falling on your sword for, but when it is, fall hard…and Ideas of the sort I just described were certainly not amongst them.

And therein lies the issue.

If you won’t die, kill, or fall on your sword for something, then how passionate are you really? How seriously good is your idea? How much could it really be worth?

People who value open systems believe that is just the point—value comes not from owning, but from sharing. Value isn’t derived from personal passion, but from a passion to share and build together. From understanding that access is the new ownership—it’s not what I hoard, it’s what I can use when I need it.

Put in a pennyworth of thinking and take out a dollar…not a bad investment strategy these days, nés pas?

No need to kill or die…rather, live with the understanding that you can add value to others as they will to you.?

The core strategy is simple: set up an environment where specific idea ownership is irrelevant and passion is built by abandoning the barbed wire fence that you might have once held dear and precious. You don’t give up ownership because you have lost power, but rather (and better) because together with others you have built on ideas collaboratively, and the resulting new mash-up is exciting, exhilarating, and motivating… and by the way, might only last until another addition; another idea is thrown into the mix; another source of input…The most powerful outcomes will be built and evolve over time with deep and committed collaboration.

Some would still rather kill or die…me? I subscribe to the philosophy of the late Sir Winston Churchill:?

“Although prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it be postponed.”?

Be open to sharing. Be open to building. Be open to collaboration. Be open to others. And, most importantly, be open to the understanding that being a part of a greater whole is worth way more than your single slice of the pie.?

Ideas have a way of growing and expanding. All ideas. Let’s not make our ideas cool and think petty.?

Postpone the martyrdom…better yet, kill it…

What's your view?