Let’s be honest - we love our ideas. They are like our babies; we are with them from the beginning, we carefully raise them in our minds, and we are like mothers who love their children unconditionally. We are proud of them and we become emotionally attached to them. If somebody uses our idea without permission we might become over-protective and defensive.
It’s relatively easy to get attached to our ideas when we have poured blood, sweat and tears into them.
It’s relatively easy to get attached to our ideas when we have poured blood, sweat and tears into them.
There is a strong psychological mechanism which supports this process - it’s called “psychological ownership”.
Why does this happen to us? How does it work? There are some theoretical explanations; one of which is called “attachment theory”. It suggests that psychological ownership creates a non-transferable association between the self and the good (in this case, our idea). The good is incorporated into the self-concept of the owner, becoming part of their identity. Self-associations in this case might take the form of an emotional attachment to the good. Once an attachment has formed, the potential loss of the good is perceived as a threat to the self.
Do you think that, if you came up with a new idea for making money, you could face something like this?
Once the attachment is formed, we become selective in the feedback we hear. We only take the positive feedback into account.
There is research that backs up this claim. Once attachment forms, we can become selective in what we hear. We literally become blind in one eye (sometimes in two as well), and we mostly take positive feedback into account.
If you find any part of this unclear or would like a more in-depth explanation, watch the brief video about this phenomenon created by our founder, Witold Wisniewski.
So how will this affect the chances of business success when it comes to implementing an idea?
Things will often get worse. If you have a new business idea, who are the people you will go to for feedback? This will often be people who are not prepared to support entrepreneurs professionally, for example relatives and friends. They want to support you, and they believe in you, so they will likely say something like: “this is good”, “I like it”, “this is amazing”. From a business point of view, this is usually useless feedback. It will only strengthen your belief in investing (time, money, energy, etc.) in your idea.
When this is the case, we will not be able to see that the idea is not well adapted to the business environment and we are likely to fail.
Don’t fall in love in your idea.
First of all, be very aware: you are not your idea. If the idea is bad, it doesn’t mean you are a bad businessperson or a worthless human being. The opposite also applies. If you have a great idea or ideas, it doesn’t mean you are always right. Your company is not you. You are you.
Don’t take criticism of your idea as a critique of you. And don’t get married to the first eruption of creativity that comes from your mind.
Thankfully, business design offers simple and practical solutions. Will you come up with one idea? Write it down on a sheet of paper, hang it on a wall, and forget about it for a moment. Sit down and come up with 5 to 10 other ideas. If you have a team, organise a brainstorm session. Generate a few to a dozen different ideas. Have a discussion, talk about the strong and weak points of each idea, use napkins to present it to other members, vote, select a few of the best ones, and ask yourself: what would have to be true for these ideas to work?
Think about what evidence you have to back them up. Ask yourself what you need to check to produce evidence. Turn assumptions into testable hypotheses, run small experiments, and gather real-user feedback. Always make decisions based on evidences not ideas.
Don’t fall in love in your idea.