the goose

What is an idea worth? Kicking back in the pub and swapping get rich quicky ideas is a favourite pastime of taxi-drivers and software engineers everywhere. Flexible working conditions and tales of vast dot com fortunes respectively stimulate business ideas into life. It is worth considering what an idea is really worth however. Its fun coming up with ideas – which means there is a ready supply. There are definitely more business ideas than there are businesses so why do their midwives guard them so jealously? There is a perception that if someone finds out the ’secret’ they could run off and instantly become financially independent. Of course there are famous examples of ‘ideas’ which did turn out to be worth millions. Xerox Parc, a Palo Alto based R+D facility that came up with the computer mouse gave it away to Steve Jobs while he was on a field trip there. More often than not however – ideas aren’t worth the paper on which they are written.

We are obsessed with coming up with an idea so good we wouldn’t have to actually work to make it happen. Of course- it does take work. Shed loads – to get even the simplest idea off the ground and into commercial reality. Only a tiny fraction of the population really put the work in that is required.

Luckily however -we don’t have to guess to hard as to what an idea is really worth. Licensing a patented idea is by far and away the purest valuation of what an idea is worth. Typically – license fees on a patent are in the 1% region.