Wisdom on Sharing Ideas

There are a lot more event designers and planners blogging these days, and I love it! It is a way to present fresh ideas and keep yourself on your toes artistically. It is also a great resource for people who need stylish ideas for their own events.

I often get asked (mainly from people who don't yet quite "get" the blogging phenomenon) why I would so freely share ideas - especially since event designers mainly get paid for implementing their ideas. After all, it is a business that is built on intellectual property. At the end of the night, you may have a spectacular wedding, but you can't take it home with you. We, as professionals, mainly deal with emotion and creative ideas - hardly tangible - yet so important.

This post from Seth Godin sums up so eloquently why I have no qualms about sharing ideas via this blog. Have a look at what he has to say about it:

"Padmanabhan wrote me a nice note today, asking why I so freely give away ideas. (It was nice because he thought some of the ideas were actually good ones).

I responded that ideas are easy, doing stuff is hard.

My feeling is that the more often you create and share ideas, the better you get at it. The process of manipulating and ultimately spreading ideas improves both the quality and the quantity of what you create, at least it does for me.

History is littered with inventors who had "great" ideas but kept them quiet and then poorly executed them. And history is lit up with do-ers who took ideas that were floating around in the ether and actually made something happen. In fact, just about every successful venture is based on an unoriginal idea, beautifully executed.

So, if you've got ideas, let them go. They're probably holding you back from the hard work of actually executing."

If you want to read more about sharing business ideas and information, check out Love is the Killer App by Tim Sanders. The philosophies Tim presents have been around for ages, but he offers some tangible ways to put them into action in today's business world.

{originally posted on September 12, 2007}