If you keep a notebook of your ideas, chances are you are a serial ideator.

We write down our ideas so as not to forget them and hopefully work on them someday. The problem is that soon enough our idea-collections outgrow our capacity to execute on them. Most of the ideas would never see the light of day. That’s a pity and a waste for the world. Here I propose a solution.

Share your ideas publicly

If you sit on an idea for long enough, someone else is bound to come up with it. While not all ideas are shareable at the time of conception (trade secrets), we will actually never execute on most of them. If you can’t dedicate the next few years of your life to making it happen, why not share it with the world and let someone else try?

By sharing the surplus of ideas a few things can happen:

• The value perception of our top 3 ideas increases and so does our motivation/responsibility to work on them. This helps us set priorities.
• Our shared ideas hopefully get executed by others which makes the world a slightly better, more advanced place.
• We get feedback on our shared ideas and possibly improve them through creative contributions from others.
• By sharing rather than hoarding ideas we pay it forward and help instill intellectual collaboration among people.
• For what it’s worth, shared ideas are credited to the ideator via the CC BY license.

For me the Brainstorming platform is one of those top 3 ideas. This is where people can share and upgrade each other’s ideas. Together we can advance the frontiers of science and make our technologies catch up with our ambitions.