Your idea is not unique. Your ideology is.

Christopher came back with a long face. He kept accusing and cursing under his breath. He threatened to sue as well as petition the attorney general, etc. When asked why he was fuming, his reply: “they stole my idea.” – crap!

Christopher forgot that a million other people are already thinking (or have thought of) the exact same idea he claimed someone else had stolen. Welcome to the party Christopher. No idea is original to you. Your ideology is unique to you!

Consider:

Puma and Addidas are known sportswear manufacturing companies. Well, the owners of Puma and Addidas are also blood brothers (Puma is the older brother of Addidas). First, they established a shoemaking company in the 1950’s or so. The shoe company was doing good, however, the two brothers nursed different ideologies – even though, they shared the same idea. With the different ideologies pursing both, they eventually separated and ended up establishing their individual sportswear making firms. Both sportswear making companies are giants in the world today. The same idea. Different ideologies!

Steven jobs was kicked out of Apple Inc. few years after founding the company. He didn’t lament forever and started suing and cursing, etc. He founded NEXT, PIXAR immediately! His ideology was dangerously fixated on making a dent on the world and he never looked back on it. He was so good at turning any idea (animation from PIXAR) into awesome products (TOY STORY pt 1, 2; FINDING NEMO, etc). He came back to Apple far bigger and better than when he left.
Being summoned by the school authorities and threatened to be expelled is never a joke and any student who finds himself in such a situation wouldn’t want to go back to it. Any reasonable student would eliminate the reason that took him there the first time. Not Mark Zuckerberg. Mark’s ideology couldn’t allow him stay out of “good” trouble with the school authorities. That ideology is the reason you are reading this. Note that more than 32 social networking sites were already online before facebook surfaced. MySpace, Hi5, etc. Many of them have closed up. Ideologies!

When people come up with brilliant ideas and their family and friends tell them that everybody else is doing the same business or has the same idea, they simply give that idea up, I know there was no (or weak) ideology in the first place. Ideas constantly change even over a short period of time. Ideologies rarely, if ever, change!

No matter how good and awesome your idea is, if it lacks an equally awesome ideology, it is already dead. You simply gave someone else whose ideology is well-rooted a head way in implementing that idea better than you could ever have done it. There were 25 search engines before Google was established. In fact, Ask dot come was already well-established before Google. Google tried selling to Ask but Ask refused to buy or invest in Google at the early stage.

Yahoomail was the king until few years ago when gmail took over. Gmail never thought, “Oh, yahoomail is already doing email. Let’s forget it guys.” Ideologies!
I see ideologies as spiritual beings backing up whatever ideas we came up with. Ideologies are there to remind us the major reason we came up with an idea in the first place – they never remind us of the beauty of the idea and how long it must last. Ideologies are the foundations of good or bad ideas. Once the ideology is well-watered, any seed of idea tends to quickly germinate on it.
Ideologies are not products or services or even passions. Ideologies are spiritual reasons and subconscious voices that will never allow you be unless you achieve a particular aim or goal using any means (that is any idea).

The truth is that if you have not found that ideology yet; if you have not instilled that spiritual reason yet, any idea you currently have will seem the best. However, once there is a shakeup in the process of achieving that goal, all interest, spark and passion for the idea is lost.

To move up and forward in the world of entrepreneurship and whatever career path we choose, ideology is key. Develop and water yours. Any idea planted on it germinates faster!