Are you worried about protecting your business ideas when talking to others about them?

[Charly King]

In association with LHS Solicitors, we're wondering whether you are worried about protecting your business ideas when talking to others about them.

You are probably aware that ideas are more important than experience or capital when it comes to business, so we'd like to know whether protecting these ideas is a concern to small business owners?

 

[Graham Tyers]

Nope, not in the slightest.

I'd disagree. I really don't think ideas rank above experience or capital.

But hey, maybe it's just that my ideas are valueless. Experience tells me that's always possible.

 

[Avango Courier]

Yes - a thousand times YES.

I am currently working on a couple of new sidelines for my business that I think will give my brand a bit of something extra but until such time as I can afford to go all in with it I've kept the work I've done on them at a distance (so none of my competitors see what I'm up to, hopefully).

I come up with new ideas all the time but the risk of letting the idea slip to the wrong person whilst sounding them out has meant many of them stay at idea level on my office whiteboard (which is in a secret location - just in case anyone's reading this).

But I put this down to having been burnt before at two separate companies where other people have taken credit for ideas I originally pitched.

 

[fisicx]

You are probably aware that ideas are more important than experience or capital when it comes to business

Like IDM, I disagree with this. The forum is full of people with ideas but no experience or capital, and they all fail because they have no experience or capital.

In any case, the very second you launch your business idea it becomes available to anyone to copy, invest more and market better than you. So it's not something I'm going to sweat over.

PS: What's a 'Client Service Manager UKBF'?

 

[Mark T Jones]

Like others, I would suggest experience, capital and a cohesive plan are infinitely more valuable than an idea. In fact I would go as far as to say that in a small business environment, idea theft is non-existent as a problem. Time and effort spent protecting ideas would be far better invested in turning the idea into a viable business

 

[The Byre]

A good idea is about as valuable as a bucket of warm spit.

I have several good ideas before I reach my wake-up coffee. It all depend on who she is! By the time I get to lunch, I am bursting with ideas (or depending on the coffee, just bursting!)

The trouble with ideas, is knowing how to get from here to there. As was stated by Mark, Fisicx and IDM, you need experience and capital to get from here to there. I bet we have all had great ideas for a film or a TV programme. Sometimes, we even have ideas for physical products. But it takes knowhow and experience and above all, a team to put these things together.

It takes masses of experience in your chosen field to put a team together.

And without a team, you don't have a business.

 

[Avango Courier]

I'm not suggesting ideas are MORE important than experience and capital but I don't understand how you can employ either without an idea to first start from. And I think that's more the point from the OP - protecting that idea.

For example, here I am. I have my big 'idea' and I also have plenty of related experience that I think will see it brought to life but what I'm lacking is capital.

Meanwhile there's my big competitor, they also have the experience and have huge capital - but what are they doing with it? Nothing. Because they haven't had the idea yet.

So what I need to do is protect MY idea until such time as I've raised the capital needed.

Think of how many times someone has patented an idea that they didn't actually come up with (Thomas Edison for one) - and you see that protecting an idea IS a concern.

 

[MrComputerSaint]

The forum is full of people with ideas but no experience or capital, and they all fail because they have no experience or capital.

This made me laugh. It was just funny, not because of people failing!

Anyway, yes I worry about sharing ideas with others.

 

[Scott@KarmaContent]

To be honest, most people are too lazy/stupid/dumb to make their own ideas work nevermind someone else's.

 

[Clinton]

Charly, as you've seen, people who've been around the block a few times don't share this unusual theory you've offered about ideas being more important than experience or capital.

But newbies to business, as we find in thread after thread, think their idea is the best thing since sliced bread and haven't yet learned that you can throw your best ideas out there all day long and nobody's going to bother doing anything with them ...because it takes blood and sweat to convert an idea into hard cash.

May I ask from where you got this theory you posted about ideas being more important than experience or capital? A patent lawyer?

Welcome to UKBF and your baptism by fire.

 

[Mark T Jones]

'Idea' is, of course quite a broad term but from experience, 98% of 'ideas' are at best minor variations o. What already exists, or doesn't exist for a reason

Those few that are innovative and commercial nearly always require significant input in time and development before you reach the hard bit - getting customers to buy into it

On the other hand, your competitor steals your idea ( in reality they probably thought of it years ago). They invest in perfecting it, they market it, leaving you free to benefit from their work.

 

[The Byre]

For example, here I am. I have my big 'idea' and I also have plenty of related experience that I think will see it brought to life but what I'm lacking is capital.

Meanwhile there's my big competitor, they also have the experience and have huge capital - but what are they doing with it? Nothing. Because they haven't had the idea yet.

I read that statement yesterday and had a shoofti at your website and at the websites of other couriers and then it struck me - yes, I had an idea!

WOW!

Now what do I do? I'm not a courier and I have no experience and I am certainly not going to spread any bread on some idea in an industry I know nothing about. I don't even know enough to evaluate the idea. The closest I get to the courier trade, is the bloke who comes to pick up and drop off stuff - and of course the mail man.

My idea was for a click-and-collect just for businesses. The plumber, the taxi driver, white van man all need to get deliveries too, but they do not have an office that is open until 6pm to take deliveries, so they waste their time, casing parcels needlessly. A B2B click-n-collect service.

One local franchise gets a small fee for having the stuff there, instead of wasting diesel and time, having some poor bloke schlepping all over a town, looking for a tiny business that will not be home anyway!

The more I thought about my idea, the more I liked it.

But then beer o'clock struck and I began to develop other ideas! A wooden microphone, a passive 5.1 volume controller, a music school, a film about a prostitute who reeks revenge on all the men who have abused her, an alpaca farm and of course a micro-brewery. As I got deeper into the bevvies, that last one began to look ever-more appealing!

Ideas are ten-a-penny! Or as the old song goes "It ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it!"

 

[Charly King]

Yes - a thousand times YES.

I am currently working on a couple of new sidelines for my business that I think will give my brand a bit of something extra but until such time as I can afford to go all in with it I've kept the work I've done on them at a distance (so none of my competitors see what I'm up to, hopefully).

I come up with new ideas all the time but the risk of letting the idea slip to the wrong person whilst sounding them out has meant many of them stay at idea level on my office whiteboard (which is in a secret location - just in case anyone's reading this).

But I put this down to having been burnt before at two separate companies where other people have taken credit for ideas I originally pitched.

Thanks for your response, AvangoCouriers! This is really interesting. Can you tell us a little bit more about 'having been burnt' previously? Were you worried at the time (when you were originally sharing the ideas that were used) or did this not cross your mind?

PS: What's a 'Client Service Manager UKBF'?

Hi there! I work behind the scenes of UKBF at Sift Media our parent company, primarily with our commercial clients but I also build (read: build, not write) some of the content on the forums. As this thread is in association with LHS Solicitors, I'm managing it now that Rachael Power has moved on. I hope that clears it up!

I'm not suggesting ideas are MORE important than experience and capital but I don't understand how you can employ either without an idea to first start from. And I think that's more the point from the OP - protecting that idea.

You hit the nail on the head here. The point of this thread is not to debate whether ideas or experience/capital are more important and there are clearly different opinions on this among the UKBF community. That said, lots of small businesses are formed by people without any experience and with very little capital and they go on to be very successful indeed, but this is another topic!

We'd like to know, regardless of what stage your business is actually at, how concerned you are about your idea possibly being poached as a result of you discussing it with others, as was experienced by AvangoCouriers.

Has anyone else experienced this? If so, has it impacted how you operated afterwards when it came to discussing your ideas?

 

[Mark T Jones]

Hi Charly - and welcome!

I'm sure Avango will speak up, but my reading of his situation was that his ideas were stolen within the corporate environment - where what was at stake was reputation (and perhaps a small bonus).

In the small business environment the biggest challenge by far is converting an idea into a functioning business and, As Avango has said this means that in the main, nothing happens.

I frequently sign NDAs - and nearly always the information that follows offers nothing of interest to anyone else (or me) - even if I was inclined to sell it on. The idea is seldom new, and execution is invariably lacking.

As I said previously, the best thing that can happen to most small business ideas is for them to be 'stolen' by someone with the experience & the budget to make them real

 

[Graham Tyers]

I've got two NDA's on my desk. Both of which are from companies I'm not going to deal with. I'm partnering with a third who didn't feel like trying to start a business relationship by declaring that they don't trust me.

Issuing an NDA on first contact feels like somebody who turns up to a first date with their solicitor in tow handing over a pre-nup to sign before you're allowed to tuck into the starter.

 

[stevebrownlie]

Gary Vaynerchuk agrees with most of the posters here, and I'm sure he's seen thousands of ideas as a VC investor these days. 'Ideas are s***, execution is the game'.

I don't even worry about sharing things that we're doing well that other agencies aren't doing (I wrote a chapter for someone's business crash course on linkbuilding recently) badly. It generates business for us - other agencies can see my process is better than theirs and decide if they want to try to implement it all themselves (do work...) or just outsource it to us.

The truth is, as Gary says, most ideas have probably been had before. The people we've heard of are the ones who can execute.

 

[The Byre]

First came

You are probably aware that ideas are more important than experience or capital when it comes to business,

followed by

The point of this thread is not to debate whether ideas or experience/capital are more important

then we had

lots of small businesses are formed by people without any experience and with very little capital and they go on to be very successful indeed,

I have yet to see one single solitary company started by a person with no experience and very little capital, go on to become very successful.

When I am not running my own show, I also help start-ups and the ONLY ones that go on to provide their owners with even a basic income (never mind the utopian idea of great success!) have been by people with either an in-depth knowledge of that market, or the wherewithal to buy that knowledge. I am sure that there will be exceptions, but I have yet to come across a concrete example of one!

The postings on this forum speak a very different language!

"I'm totally insolvent and up to my little ears in debt!" is topic number one!

Back in the 50s and 60s, we all stumbled about, into virgin territory. After the war, everything was up for grabs - but those halcyon days are over!

 

[Ian J]

.

I frequently sign NDAs - and nearly always the information that follows offers nothing of interest to anyone else (or me) - even if I was inclined to sell it on. The idea is seldom new, and execution is invariably lacking.

Me too but mine seem designed more to protect the identities of the people that I am dealing with rather than the product itself and include the girlfriend of a mega mega rock star plus someone very well connected to royalty

 

[NickGrogan]

NDAs are worth whatever you're prepared to spend enforcing them.

I've signed NDAs with Microsoft, EA, Sony and several investment banks, given that they all have huge legal teams those agreements have significant value. They were also tailored for the project.

I also get NDAs on a regular basis from people who think that they've reinvented the energy markets - they haven't and many of the NDAs have been downloaded off the internet and not right for their needs. Combined with a lack of resources, this makes the agreement fairly worthless.

 

[Gecko001]

I think that the theft of IP is a big problem these days. There is certainly a niche market out there in my view for the legal profession to serve small businesses with regard the whole subject of IP theft.

Many businesses depend on producing IP, be they publishers, bloggers, architects, design engineers, photograhers, software engineers etc etc.

Ideas come into the IP realm, but they are only a small part of the whole process of producing intellectual property in most cases. It is the hard work and investment of money that comes after the original idea that business owners want to protect.

 

[BustersDogs]

I do a little bit because I'm doing things nobody else seems to be doing. So I've learned to keep my mouth shut. My ideas are copied 2/3 years later, that's going to happen anyway. It's nice to have got in 'first' though, and already be established when other people start offering the same services. And it pushes me to keep coming up with new ideas.

What's annoying is when someone with more capital than I've got does it bigger than I can do it, but that's my problem for not being entrepreneurial enough to take more risk when I launch my ideas.

 

[john1989]

Thinking out loud, I hope nobody steals my idea of 4 seats encased in a tonne of metal that moves passengers from one destination to another.

 

[fisicx]

The point of this thread is not to debate whether ideas or experience/capital are more important and there are clearly different opinions on this among the UKBF community.

It's key to the whole thread. If you regard ideas as being important then you may want protection. If you don't regard ideas as being important then you won't care if they are protected.

The thread just seems like a bit of puffery for LHS Solicitors to offer protection for ideas. And these are not IP, they are just ideas - of which there are millions from which very few will ever come to fruition. No point in paying for protection on an idea, unless there is a business plan attached and some measure of success.

 

[Clinton]

It's key to the whole thread. If you regard ideas as being important then you may want protection. If you don't regard ideas as being important then you won't care if they are protected.

Agreed.

I'm still curious about where the theory about ideas being the most important originated.

 

[F_B]

[QUOTE="May I ask from where you got this theory you posted about ideas being more important than experience or capital? A patent lawyer?[/QUOTE]

I assure you, the patent profession are acutely aware that there is much more to making a business successful than just an idea. A very small proportion of granted patents turn into successful business ventures.

The European Patent Office has a list of seven deadly sins of the Inventor which may be apt here:
https://www.epo.org/learning-events/materials/inventors-handbook/sins.html

 

[The Byre]

Oh for pity's sake -

You can't protect an idea!

If your idea is important to you, keep it to yourself until such time as it is ready for roll-out. Until then, keep your beak shut!

More complex ideas, such as the story-line of a film or the details of some reality TV programme can be copyrighted, but that is about as far as it goes.

 

[Newchodge]

Presumably this thread is about LHS wanting to launch IP protection work, and wondering if there is a market for it.

Transparency is always a good idea.

 

[Graham Tyers]

What's key to this thread is how much the advertiser is paying for the banners.

Presumably this thread is about LHS wanting to launch IP protection work, and wondering if there is a market for it.

Transparency is always a good idea.

But that means they've released their business idea out into the public domain! I hope that's not bad.

 

[Clinton]

[I assure you, the patent profession are acutely aware that there is much more to making a business successful than just an idea

Good for them and I look out for their announcement on how ideas can be protected in the future.

But if I may remind you, the statement in the OP was this: "You are probably aware that ideas are more important than experience or capital when it comes to business" (my bold).

The supremacy of ideas is not presented for debate, it's presented as a fact. If this is a universal truth I've somehow missed in my 35 years of running businesses I'd like to find the source; there may be other truths worth exploring.

Or has someone invented a "truth" to serve some vested interest?

 

[beasty]

Yes it is a big problem if you are sharing your ideas with people who can quickly action them.

Without an IDEA you never have a business, so as a first step it is fundamental, whether it is an original idea or your idea is simply to replicate someone else, the IDEA comes before the business so it is without doubt more important than experience or capital as without it, there is never any attempt to form a business.

Also, your idea might have a lot of hidden processes and relationships that are not obvious and would not be obvious even on launch.

It is not really a question of WHICH is more important, if you have a great idea its valuable, you may not know how to action it, but if you spit out the whole detail to someone that can, your opportunity may be gone.

NDAs are invariably offered by people with nothing worth protecting, it is weird!

30 years ago Peter Wood conceived Direct Line insurance a company that would sell direct to the public and financed it by forming a clever contract with RBS, revolutionary at the time, no big deal now, but his idea allowed him to form a company and make many millions of pounds by being first with a 42 million quid pay off in his final year under contract with RBS.
His idea did not require capital as it was underwritten by RBS and he operated from their offices, the IDEA to sell direct and the IDEA to have RBS finance it was what made him rich.

 

[domainguy]

mmm. I have money and skills just can't come up with good ideas!

I had one for a game and teamed up with 2 friends to create it. They coded and I did graphics and marketing. They felt that they had the bigger workloads in the project and I didnt feel they appreciated that without the idea they would have no coding or game. In the end the marketing far far far outweighed any effort on coding or graphics. Next time i'd pay a coder and keep 100% of the idea but would definately need NDA's for what they are worth.

 

[oldoakey]

I have been business now for over 25 years - and guess what I also have an idea for a product that could change the way many of us buy furniture and reduce landfill at the same time. So its green and money saving at the same time. This is a low tech idea there is nothing to copyright I doubt very much if you could patent it.

But i feel at an impasse as the idea could so easily be stolen.

The problem is how can I protect the investment - and the answer - you cant so what possibly happens is - nothing

 

[Employment Law Clinic]

I had an idea some years ago. Absolutely nothing unique about it, but I intended to do it better than any competitors I'd be up against. I didn't spend a lot of time thinking how I can protect this idea of how I'll do things better: I wanted to get it out there, tell potential clients why they should use my business!

With experience, I could have invested my capital a lot better, but the idea, the selling points, I wanted to shout as loud as possible, not hide or protect; the capital I did want to protect, and started off badly as a consequence - giving me experience.

Karl Limpert

 

[The Byre]

But if I may remind you, the statement in the OP was this: "You are probably aware that ideas are more important than experience or capital when it comes to business" (my bold).

The supremacy of ideas is not presented for debate, it's presented as a fact. If this is a universal truth I've somehow missed in my 35 years of running businesses I'd like to find the source; there may be other truths worth exploring.

Perfectly worded!

As for the RBS-Direct Line case - a perfect example of the idea being worthless and the execution being everything! Having read that about RBS backing DL, I for one am none the wiser. But then I know nothing about insurance or how it works. Mr Wood understood how insurance works and that was why he could make his idea work and I would have failed completely.

Everybody assumes that the movie industry is an ideas industry - it isn't. Like every other industry, it is a know-how and capital (in the broadest sense of that expression) industry. The same goes for music, print and all the other creative industries.

You can make a huge movie with World-famous stars without any money invested. That's right, you don't even need angels to put your movie together! You just need the right franchise (Bourne, Bond, etc.) and experience. Experience and past success are your capital and without at least some of that capital, you will fail!

 

[Gecko001]

I

Good for them and I look out for their announcement on how ideas can be protected in the future.

But if I may remind you, the statement in the OP was this: "You are probably aware that ideas are more important than experience or capital when it comes to business" (my bold).

The supremacy of ideas is not presented for debate, it's presented as a fact. If this is a universal truth I've somehow missed in my 35 years of running businesses I'd like to find the source; there may be other truths worth exploring.

Or has someone invented a "truth" to serve some vested interest?

This is sales-speak meant to elicit agreement from people who have not a clue about the subject and are thus good targets for what ever the salesperson is selling. As for the people who actually do know anything about the subject......well then the sales person might not be too interested in selling to those people. I suggest leave such expressions to those in the used car salesroom and telesales call centre with all due respect to the OP.

 

[xjr13m]

I'm sorry but the prescriptive nature of "You are probably aware that ideas are more important than experience or capital when it comes to business" has rather narked me. And surprised it's even been posted on a forum read by people at the sharp end of running a business.

An idea without experience and/or capital is likely to remain just that, an idea.

 

[Dan Izzard]

I've moved a number of off-topic posts to the feedback area as although valid feedback about the site, we're not linked to the discussion in question. Cheers

 

[Gecko001]

My local crematorium received hundreds of complaints when a wheelie bin was left outside their gates on bin collection day. On the bin were the words: "no hot ashes".

 

[fisicx]

I've moved a number of off-topic posts to the feedback area as although valid feedback about the site, we're not linked to the discussion in question. Cheers

I disagree. The post of mine that you moved was relevant to the thread and the topic under discussion.

 

[Clinton]

It looks like Charly has abandoned this thread. She keeps visiting to check posts, but doesn't reply.

So I'll never know the answer to my question