I’m frequently asked, “How can you keep people from stealing your ideas?”
Answer: I can’t. In fact, I don’t even try, figuring that creativity and originality are muscles—what doesn’t get regularly used (by the habitual plagiarist) will become flaccid over time, but you can’t let those negatives keep you from striving to be creative and original, or from producing your ideas.
This is the second of three client examples come to mind when talking about controlling creative.
Donna, the self-made home decorating expert, had contrived an elaborate kit for helping homemakers come up with just the right palette, textiles, and tschotkes for each room of their homes. I didn’t want to do this job—from the first I sensed something was wrong or, at least, not positive—but she worked in a client’s office and it would’ve been churlish to refuse her.
From the outset she was paranoid that this idea would be stolen, so rather than show me any business or marketing plans, she preferred to feed me discrete portions of the project and to micro-manage me, much as the CIA may handle a new operative of whom they’re not entirely sure.
At the end of the project she had me sign a complex disclaimer form, basically pledging to never try and steal her ideas, or to reveal any of it to others. I felt tempted to make jokes about how my entire life had waited for this brass ring, this home-decorating kit, but feared she’d take them seriously.
Not surprisingly, the kit never took off and I suspect it’s because to put something on the market, you have to be public about it, not guard it like the formula to Coca-Cola.
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