No One Is Going to Pay You for Your Ideas

This person acknowledges the problem, as follows:

How do I sell not an idea but my involvement in creating ideas to a reputable company? Is there a way for me to work (preferably from home) and continually provide my endless supply of ideas to a company? How do I go about getting a job where I am the idea man; where I am a part of the think tank for a company; where I can show them what is wrong and why and how they can do it better and blow away the competition in the process? Is it even possible to have such a dream job or am I just fooling myself?

If you have to ask, then yes, you’re fooling yourself.

Because although it is true that some very special people get jobs like that—Alan Kay, for example, computer pioneer, extremely accomplished; or see a piece from the New York Times about Entrepreneurs in Residence—it takes accomplishments to validate ideas. Those entrepreneurs in residence are there for ideas, but they didn’t get there by having ideas. They got there by executing on ideas.

I think the people who walk around thinking they have multiple great ideas, but have no accomplishment to prove it, don’t understand how ideas work. Untested ideas are like unwritten novels. All unwritten novels are brilliant—on the minds of would-be authors who didn’t write them. You and I can’t evaluate our own ideas. We’re too close  to them. Real ideas are out there in the world, bouncing around, until somebody locks onto them, does something with them, executes, and makes them happen. That gives them value.

The only thing you can do with a great idea is execute. And nobody in their right mind will pay you until you’ve done that, and more than once. You have valuable ideas: then prove it.

This article was originally published by Tim Berry