How to protect your ideas in the digital age

Seth Godin, who has written 12 bestsellers that have been translated into 33 languages, is an in demand global speaker, digital age trend watcher and thinker is one of my mentors. I’ve bought and read his books, watched his videos and read his blog religiously.

I was commissioned to do an all day workshop with Jamaica Trade and Invest /JAMPRO on December 3rd at the Jamaica Conference Centre where I spoke to just under 100 Jamaican entrepreneurs of Micro, Small, Medium -sized businesses. I prepared a 95 slide power point presentation which was in demand at the end of the day. I pondered whether to just give it away, selectively do so or not at all.

So I asked Seth and my other colleague and mentor Gerd Leonhard, The MediaFuturist – he too is a blogger, global speaker, trendwatcher and ebook publisher. Gerd in a reply email said “My philosophy is ‘knowledge grows when shared’ and I have had a very good experience with that so far. I only publish PDFs though, not PPTs, and only use creative commons licensed images (Flickr) or iStockphoto.com or fair use stuff. If it’s free published I have never had a real issue.Cheers from Switzerland and let’s do something together in Jamaica one of these days;)”

I emailed Seth and asked him too, he too replied promptly and said…“I don’t share mine, because they have no text and make no sense..but if they had text, I’d share em.” So I followed their advice I shared my PDF Presentation…on Facebook, on Twitter and my Company Blog as a free download. And I more ebooks coming too and my roster for speaking in increasing too.

So when I saw his article on how to protect your ideas in the digital age. I cut and paste his signature end of article twist. Here it is.

So, how to protect your ideas in a world where ideas spread?
Don’t.
Instead, spread them. Build a reputation as someone who creates great ideas, sometimes on demand. Or as someone who can manipulate or build on your ideas better than a copycat can. Or use your ideas to earn a permission asset so you can build a relationship with people who are interested. Focus on being the best tailor with the sharpest scissors, not the litigant who sues any tailor who deigns to use a pair of scissors.