Being confident about your ideas!

Recently I read blog Opinions Vs Ideas illustrating how wonderful ideas are dominated by our opinions about the originator of that idea, that we associate ideas with a personality of originator, it transforms into opinion. I discussed this blog with my friends, one of my friends stated the importance of 'good listening skills', which I fully agree with. Another friend of mine wants to file a patent about his idea on how to improve the fuel efficiency of the vehicles in the traffic in Indian metro cities (which can be applied universally). However, no matter how good your listening skills are and your attempt to be unbiased, there are various other factors that dominate ideas, like prejudices or cultural aspects.

So far, Copyrights, patents etc was property of "intellectuals" (for me in the field of management, technology, environment, literature, health). My friends who confidently talk about these terminologies are B-school graduates or researchers. But ideas are ideas!

I did learn my lesson! In my film workshop (in London), we were discussing about how ideas are hacked by people (in context of scripts, stories) over internet and how important is copyrighting is. One of the participant was speaking quite genuinely about it. He was personally affected by such issue that he uploaded his product documentation on internet without copyright. And it was stolen by someone which he could never claim back. He seemed to be pretty annoyed (of course!) insisting everyone how important it is. During our after workshop hang out discussion, I curiously asked him about his product. He had published a 30 (or 'n') page article about 'dating' which was stolen. 'Oh! that's bad!' I said. But to be honest, my inner reaction was 'Pfft!' Now when I think about about my real reaction, I must admit that my reaction was totally biased. I probably thought 'dating' as a matter of research as totally stupid or foolish domain!? And it wasn't just me. Whoever I shared my this experience with, had similar reaction.

He now successfully runs his own dating company and website, making a lot of money from his new ideas. And here I am - insane to find his product not so "intellectual"??