Comes a criticism:
“I am moved to let you know that I disagree with the idea of telling everyone your ideas and speaking openly about them to suppliers, customers, competitors and so on. I had my idea stolen as I was talking shop with someone who then passed it onto a competitor. They then switched their focus entirely to the market they were unaware of which I knew about. Occasionally I see their posters, Facebook ads and so on popping up and it just sickens me. I would not be in the situation I am in but in business if it were not for this slip and I cannot believe how naive I was. Yes they were quicker to market, and they were already in the business whereas I would've been a new entrant, so perhaps they deserve it. But I feel it really is a cruel lesson in life and business for me. I would strongly caution against telling other people your ideas and for getting NDAs, and not revealing all details whenever possible. You should let people know your ideas only when it is absolutely necessary and there's a chance you will work with the person you are talking to. I get the argument that a lot of business ideas don't come to fruition because the owners won't share their ideas, but I think that only applies to startups needing a lot of investment, which kind of necessitates others knowing about it. Bottom line, I would've been in business by now if I hadn't been so stupid, and I would've been a heck of a lot further along the way to starting something in my true passion which is international trade. What extra time it will take me now I will only see in due course.”
Comes a response:
The error you are making in thinking is called "ahistorical." You propose to learn from something that did not happen, and thus you imagine you lost something. You do correctly state something did not happen, and this is where people get their certitude. In your case you are not in business yet. This you know, this is certain. Then you attribute this to something you cannot possibly know if it is true or not. There is the error.
You cannot know if your idea was "stolen" as you were talking shop with someone, you cannot know if they passed it along. You cannot know if the competitor received the information, nor can you know if they acted on the information if in fact they received it. That is pure guess on your part. All you can know is 1. You mentioned the idea. 2. Another company put forth the idea. Far more likely, in life, is the idea was not unique to you, the competitor was working on the idea anyway. You had nothing to do with the fact they were working on the idea. A famous case is Darwin was working on natural selection, and so was Wallace. Darwin came out first. Wallace said it was his idea. Never mind Darwin was at it for 30 years, unbeknownst to Wallace. (And never mind they both got the idea reading Malthus.) There are countless versions of this in all history and all cultures. In the unlikely event you could document the idea moving from your voice, via the listener, to the competitor, all you would learn is the principle of 6 degrees of separation, and the likely event that if someone is working on an idea, that someone hears of others who are doing so too. I cannot tell you the times I hear people are doing what I am doing. Of course I would hear about it, because mutual connections would make it known, going both ways.
A side error here is the idea you have only one good shot, and if you miss it, you've lost something. No, we are in service to customers. If we can, we do, If we cannot, we do not. If someone else beats us to something, then that is good for the customers we propose to serve. We are evil if we delay customer needs so we might prosper. We are evil if we inhibit others who would serve the customer better; and sooner is one way customers are better served. Why should it sicken you that others are happy with another supplier? I in fact try to get competitors to do what I propose to do. In every instance, they have told me directly, no. It is not their thing. I have watched people go out of business for failure to steal the idea I offered.
To say you would have been in business by now, and a lot further along is a conclusion based on an ahistorical, that is false, premise. You are not in business now because you are yet to serve the customer with an offering that gets enough orders to cover the suppliers minimum production run, in a workable amount of time, profitably. There is no other reason someone is not in business.
I do not buy the idea that some ideas do not come to fruition because the owners won't share the idea. Sheer nonsense. If not, someone else will in time, just as I lay out above, the same idea, or there is an alternative that does the trick. The people who argue the idea that some items do not come to fruition because the owners won't share the idea are making the exact same ahistorical argument error you are making. NDAs and NCAs and secrecy and "intellectual property rights" are all about control, and not about marketing. These things are not grounded in natural rights, and thus are easily contrary to human rights, and indeed in these applications very much are contrary to human rights.
So here is an exercise we can use today, showing the error of ahistorical reasoning. We see perhaps a dozen Moslem nations overthrowing their repressive governments. We saw Iran do the same thing in 1979, when the Shah of Iran was thrown out.
If we argue "Iraq could not be free of Saddam Hussein without USA intervention" as many people do, that is ahistorical. Saddam Hussein was thrown out with USA intervention. This much we know. We know cannot assert Iraq would not be free of Saddam Hussein without USA intervention, because USA intervention happened, and the proposed alternative did not happen. At the same time, we can very well assert Saddam Hussein would have been overthrown without USA intervention. We can assert that because so many other Saddam Husseins, more or less, have been overthrown without USA intervention.
aHistorical reasoning: Iraq could not be free of Saddam Hussein without USA intervention.
Historical reasoning: Saddam Hussein would have been overthrown without USA intervention.
Being self-employed is about personal transformation among other things. One part of the transformation is the thinking. Get rid of the ahistorical analysis, and the picture becomes clearer, the process simpler.
Thanks for provoking this essay!
3 comments:
I agree with John's analysis here. There is a misconception among middle-class consumers that businesses start with an idea. Well, to the extent that every voluntary action must have some thought behind it, that is necessarily so. It may be necessary to have an idea but not sufficient to make a business.
My experience in business has taught me that a business starts, grows and thrives to the extent that it can listen to what the customer is asking for and then provide the answer. Somebody other than you might provide that solution with a similar idea. But they are not you and therefore will never do it exactly the way you would do it. So the thing to do is figure out how to serve the customer in your unique way, because nobody can and will do it exactly the way you would, if you really listened and responded to the customer.
Actually, "Saddam Hussein would have been overthrown without USA intervention" is just as unproveable as "Iraq could not be free of Saddam Hussein without USA intervention." I've never heard the terms "hitorical" and "ahistorical" reasoning, but they both seem to refer to the concept of "alternate history," which is a variety of historical analysis and therefore not prove/disproveable.
Right. It is not about proving or disproving anything, it is about a valid or invalid premise in an if/then logic operation.
Valid premise: Saddam Hussein would have been overthrown without USA intervention
Invalid premise: Iraq could not be free of Saddam Hussein without USA intervention.
The first premise is valid, because it is what happens in human action. The second premise is invalid, because it denies the first premise as a possibility.
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