In a recent
post, I wrote about my belief that ideas had no value and that it wasn’t
worth anyone’s time to protect a business idea. It’s a notion I have been
talking about for some time, but it is a controversial concept that often
provokes strong
disagreement. That disagreement, I think, stems from a misunderstanding of
what an idea really is — or at least what I deem an idea to be.
Let me try to clarify. I received a comment asking that if I really thought ideas were worthless, why did I bother to copyright my book, “The Entrepreneur Equation“? The answer is simple. I didn’t protect the idea of the book; I protected the final work product — postexecution.
I didn’t try to copyright my original idea for writing a book around the framework of evaluating the risks and rewards of entrepreneurship. The reality is that I wouldn’t have been able to do so — that idea cannot be protected. Furthermore, I didn’t keep the idea a secret for fear that someone else would write the same book. I shared with many people what I was doing to get feedback and to create accountability for me to finish it. I had individuals, some paid, some just helping, review early drafts to make the book stronger. Only after writing the 80,000-plus words and then revising, editing and packaging it into a final product did I seek protection. But I wasn’t protecting my idea; I was protecting my execution, my work product.
If you create something of value that can be protected and it makes sense to protect it (i.e. the cost of protecting it makes sense in relation to the amount of money you believe that you can generate from that work product), then do it. But there’s a big difference between protecting a concept for a new business and protecting a highly differentiated methodology that you have perfected over a period of years.
In my article, I wrote that Google wasn’t the first search engine and that the idea for its search engine didn’t need to be protected. One response was, well, what about Google’s algorithm? So, here’s the nuance:
Intellectual property protection can be valuable and worthwhile, but protecting your business ideas is not. It can even be counterproductive.
By Carol Roth a business strategist
Let me try to clarify. I received a comment asking that if I really thought ideas were worthless, why did I bother to copyright my book, “The Entrepreneur Equation“? The answer is simple. I didn’t protect the idea of the book; I protected the final work product — postexecution.
I didn’t try to copyright my original idea for writing a book around the framework of evaluating the risks and rewards of entrepreneurship. The reality is that I wouldn’t have been able to do so — that idea cannot be protected. Furthermore, I didn’t keep the idea a secret for fear that someone else would write the same book. I shared with many people what I was doing to get feedback and to create accountability for me to finish it. I had individuals, some paid, some just helping, review early drafts to make the book stronger. Only after writing the 80,000-plus words and then revising, editing and packaging it into a final product did I seek protection. But I wasn’t protecting my idea; I was protecting my execution, my work product.
If you create something of value that can be protected and it makes sense to protect it (i.e. the cost of protecting it makes sense in relation to the amount of money you believe that you can generate from that work product), then do it. But there’s a big difference between protecting a concept for a new business and protecting a highly differentiated methodology that you have perfected over a period of years.
In my article, I wrote that Google wasn’t the first search engine and that the idea for its search engine didn’t need to be protected. One response was, well, what about Google’s algorithm? So, here’s the nuance:
- Google comes up with the idea for a faster, more focused search engine with better results — that is an idea, and it’s not worth protecting.
- Google has an idea to create an algorithm to perform that more focused
search — that is an idea and it’s still not worth protecting.
- Google spends time and capital resources writing and producing an algorithm that changes the way search is done. This is no longer an idea; this is work product that IS worth protecting.
Intellectual property protection can be valuable and worthwhile, but protecting your business ideas is not. It can even be counterproductive.
By Carol Roth a business strategist
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