What do you do with your great idea of how to change the world? Do you keep it secrete while you try to figure out how to make it work as your project or do you tell everyone that you know and risk having someone steal your idea? Seth Goldin blogged about the difficulty of selling ideas. In the non-profit world we rarely can be paid by an organization for developing an idea, however we do make our organizations grow by developing new ideas. We fear that if someone else hears our great idea, they will steal it and make their organization grow instead of ours.
The same thought seems to hold once we begin implementing our great idea. I recently directed a project to build capacity among local organizations. My organization was one of thirteen organizations to get a similar grant. During the implementation of these five-year grants, I was astounded at how few of my fellow implementers were willing to share even basic information about their operations. Some organizations told me that they were unwilling to share their projects' annual reports, because they contained information about their operations that were trade secrets.
Seth concludes his article by stating that if you are not in the position to sell your idea, better to blog it and at least get bragging rights to have initiated the idea. If you don't have the means to champion your idea now, wouldn't it be better to have the world become a better place because of your idea?
Perhaps we need an Idea-a-Day website for non-profits where we can push our ideas out and hope that someone adopts and champions them.
