The Ideapad Manifesto: Sharing ideas liberally

View from my room at the Stanford Guesthouse

I’ve flown back to the US early to go on sort of a personal retreat, on the outskirts on Stanford. It has been a good time to take stock of life, and plan for the future.

I’ve also had the chance to go the almost 3 month backlog of entries in my notebook, to organize them into my reference system. These three months have been an incredible time for me, in terms of idea generation, understanding myself, and forming my mindset about things in life.

Going through them, I’ve also realized that I generate many ideas, but keep them to myself without sharing them, hoping to do them someday. Yet I increasingly realize doing stuff is as much having the idea, as is being in the right place at the right time, with the right skills. More important than that, everyone thinks their idea is great till they share it with others, as Scott Belsky observes.

I’ve decided to try to share any new ideas I have on this blog- even startup ideas, and commercial ideas. It’s a recognition that I’m not in the position to make them happen (at this point in life), and also a recognition that I might be wrong in thinking a particular idea is good, or in a holding a particular mindset. Having someone call bullshit on me, and the opportunity to correct my thinking may be more valuable than the idea itself in the long term.

By putting ideas out in the open also forces me to recognize the valuelessness of ideas, as anybody can take them and do them. For an idea addict like me, this is important in making me realize the key is in implementation (overcoming obstacles, adapting to ground situations). On another level, it forces me to recognize the value of ideas, by sharing them. If an idea can help the world anybody benefits, regardless of who does it in the end.