Ideas that scare people!

Seth Godin has an interesting post (from a few days ago) about big ideas and how he is happy to share them on his blog because the more you share them the better you get at coming up with more.

I agree whole heartedly with Mr. Godin and while I like to share ideas here I am in no way comparing myself to him (I can here it already......"I know Seth Godin and you sir are NO Seth Godin) but I also know that every time I mention his name here I get extra readers :)

OK OK lets bring this back to being all about me.

About a week ago I blogged about some ideas I had to make Department Stores fun again. One of my ideas was to convert the toy departments in most stores to licensed child care centers that parents could leave their kids in while they shopped and the kids would play with toy (That were also for sale) and that stated that in my not so humble opinion that more merchandise would be purchased because the parents could shop "stress free" and the kids would fall in love with whatever toys they played with and insist the parents buy them something from the toy department.

The whole thing is brilliant so I felt like sharing it other places as well. I went to LinkedIn and posted the idea in the "LinkedIn Answers" section asking people what they thought and the responses surprised me.

People were split 50/50 as to if they liked the idea but the people who were negative on it were not just negative they were angry and objected to this ideas with every ounce of their being and some even went as far as to call me a name or two.....and even more interesting was the fact that some folks (who were the angriest) qualified themselves with the statement that they are not department store shoppers.

This got me thinking about how ideas can be scary to people because the best ideas involve change and change makes some people uncomfortable.....and how change touches people who are not even interested in your product or service. I still stand by my ideas and think they are "gold" but this experience did bring me to an understanding of how people think and how to apply this to people when you are marketing to a mass audience.

-saul