Or will they steal them? This is a common feeling among startups and young managers who have ideas that they feel once shared will lose their potency.
In reality, shifting from a mindset of secrecy to one of strategic collaboration is what allows high-potential innovators to scale their impact. Let me share with you one story to show how sharing of ideas drives more adoption, more success, and more collaboration.
3M scientist Spencer Silver was working on an adhesive. He made one that had a weak grip instead of a strong one. He wanted to make it into a spray that could be put onto bulletin boards where papers are stuck and removed all the time. He didn’t know if the idea would work so what did he do?
He started sharing. He shared the idea internally in 3M for 5 years and kept pitching different uses for his invention. No luck. In one of his seminars, another 3M scientist, Arthur Fry, was listening attentively.
Art, as friends called him, used to sing in his church choir. He was frustrated that when he stood up and sang with the book open, his paper bookmarks would fall off.
Suddenly, he had a flash of inspiration. What if he could stick the bookmarks to the page using Silver’s light adhesive! He came back and tried the idea and soon started doing the same thing. He made samples and started sharing the samples with everyone!
In another 5 years, Post-It notes were born. The rest is history!
Share your ideas—widely with everyone. This builds support, partnership, and collaboration with everyone. Cultivating an open ecosystem for innovation is a powerful way to establish your professional influence and rally stakeholders around your vision.
What ideas do you have worth sharing? To discover more real-world frameworks for driving strategic collaboration and scaling your team's execution, secure your copy of my book, 10X Productive Leader.
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