I just saw this on Merlin Mann’s twitter feed:

The guy who worries people will “steal” his idea might better ponder why nobody “steals” his implementation.

As I keep saying – ideas are cheap, and implementations are valuable. We need to find better ways to cycle through ideas rapidly. This reminds me of a post from lifehacker which includes this quote from a tech CEO:

Share your great ideas promiscuously as possible to attract collaborators, even in highly specialized science and engineering fields. Otherwise your ideas will never gain traction and actually happen, and you will always be a dreamer. In the unlikely event that someone steals your idea, take it as a compliment and move on to the next great idea.

We generate ideas constantly. The key is to figure a routine for finding the best ones, and implementing them.