Discover more from Overcoming Bias
When I started at Lockheed Research in 1985, my mentor was a veteran who explained his secret for getting funding from the other Lockheed divisions:
Find an idea for a project we could do for them, but don’t tell them the idea. Instead break the idea into a few key parts, describe the parts to them, and let them put the parts together into the total idea. They will be much more willing to fund a project that is their idea.
Some advise academics not to post working papers, as others might steal your ideas. Many fiction writers are afraid editors will steal their ideas. Many are afraid that venture capitalists will steal their business idea instead of funding their team.
Howard Aiken said "Don’t worry about people stealing an idea. If it’s original, you will have to ram it down their throats." I don’t think it is quite that simple – people can and do steal ideas. But if what you want is influence, instead of credit, the choice should be easy: you should want people to steal your ideas. So think about it: how much do you or should you care about credit, versus influence?
Choose: Credit or Influence
Found from Gwern/Freeman Dyson:
"Reuben Smeed, was a man of considerable wisdom. One day at [WW2 UK] Bomber Command, he said, “In this business, you have a choice. Either you get something done or you get the credit for it, but not both.” "
For example, the marketplace seeks out both comedic writers and comedic actors, although the best comedic actors are more highly compensated.
The problem is that many popular comedians (e.g. Robin Williams, Carlos Mencia, and the execrable Dane Cook) are reputed get their jokes from other comedians -- an obscure comedian who hires a writer is essentially buying the right to run focus groups for the big shots. If the jokes are disclosed before purchase, they'll probably never be bought; if they're disclosed after, there's a "lemons" problem: joke writers are likely to give their best jokes to the people with the best delivery, and their worst to the most obscure comedians, just to get good PR and avoid the association with bad acts.
I am, of course, always one Jobs away from being proven wrong, but jobs was living in a world that had typewriters, arcade games, and typewriters; building an IP market requires lots of infrastructure and paradigms (and probably legal intervention) that we don't have yet.