“Ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition.” – Thomas Jefferson

Last weekend I was walking through Ikea and found something that stopped me in my tracks:

The Nittio LED – not just because it’s a cool product (which it is), but because this is the second time that I found this concept that I thought of two years ago back in 2014.

Around the time in Brooklyn that all the bars were getting the old-school incandescent bulbs for that speakeasy look. I was thinking that there’s a reason that those bulbs aren’t used anymore. They’re so inefficient (maybe not so inefficient anymore, but I digress) and have to be replaced all the time! There must be a better way to achieve the same look. I played around with some fiber optics trying to build a basic prototype, and put it up on the now defunct Quirky.com but it was a side thought. I never devoted much energy to figuring it out. Ok, the first time I saw someone try to pull this off, it was in an obscure Danish design shop in Belgium. Tala makes some really cool bulbs, but they are super expensive and the one I found was not exactly what I had in mind..

Now though… now it’s exactly what I had envisioned. And it’s in IKEA, the most ubiquitous furniture store on the planet. Pretty affordable too. So naturally, I bought one!

I’m sure you’ve woken up some day, or stepped out of the shower with a fantastic idea. You thought about it, brainstormed the ways it could work, and maybe more. But for some reason or another you didn’t bring it through to fruition. Maybe you weren’t passionate enough about it, didn’t have the right resources, or just needed to prioritize your efforts in something else.

No matter the reason, you didn’t build it. Months or maybe years later you’re walking in your local neighborhood and there it is. Right there. Your invention.

“But that’s my idea! I thought of that so long ago!” you think to yourself. “If someone else actually made it real, then I could’ve, if only…” Trailing off into a list of excuses.

Now, that’s not to say that you should have pursued this idea. It’s a good idea, but you just weren’t the right person to bring it to life.

If it’s an idea that has any potential, there will be someone who is that “right person” – Someone else of these billions of people on the earth just needed the right circumstances to think of the idea themselves. They had to wait for the right timing. Imagine all those wasted months of potential innovation and development, when if you told them the idea they could’ve started much earlier.

Technology builds on itself and evolves. Especially in this age of exponential growth and worldwide connection, we can all help each other with our ideas and a few months can have a huge impact. One of the ideas behind the open source movement is that we all benefit when we share. So why relegate open source just to code? Why not put our ideas out there for everyone to use? I know immediately that I won’t pursue most of the ideas that I have. So I’ll be putting them up on the internet for anyone to take and make their own. They may not be fleshed out or complete, but at least could be a starting point – after all, an idea is always just a starting point anyway.

Most ideas I have are something that I want, so if someone makes them available, that’s great for me. If nothing else, at least I’ll have bragging rights that I thought of it first (however unlikely), with a record to prove it. All I ask is that if this blog sparks a creative thought in your mind which leads to a project you’ll pursue, reach out to me and let me know. I’d be glad to provide support or brainstorm with you about additional possibilities.

Ideally by putting these ideas out there, some will come to life – if that happens, I’ll consider this a success.