Intellectual Property
Intellectual property (IP) has become the genie in the lamp of the 21st century business landscape; an overblown smokescreen that entrepreneurs and businesses are afraid to release in fear of idea theft. Yes IP is important and yes people must be wary about other people stealing a march on a good initiative, but this is more about trust than it is about employing high-cost IP lawyers and keeping ideas closely guarded.
After all, picking partners wisely and judiciously and actually implementing the idea will put you light years ahead of much of the competition.
So often we are approached by entrepreneurs saying “I have a great idea and I need your help. But I can’t tell you what the idea is’”, so what’s the next step?