from Hacker News

Dealing with colleagues who like to shoot down innovative ideas from newer guy

by inovator on 2/11/14, 6:23 AM with 4 comments

• by dredmorbius on 2/11/14, 8:25 AM

  Ideas are cheap.

  Implementations count.

  Implement your idea. Preferably, implement it and show the value of it.

  Then pitch it.

  I've had random stuff I've thrown together in a few minutes turn out to be highly valuable. One was a script I'd assembled for some datagathering on my own systems. Ended up showing it to the customer support team where I was working, got thanked a couple of years later by one of the team-members who'd remained post-acquisition who said that it had pretty much saved the asses of everyone there by making it trivially easy to gather forensic data from users' systems. Just as one example.

  Other tools I'd created and shared which turned out to be useful in other contexts, with similar stories.

• by gauriage on 2/11/14, 6:31 AM

  Like Arthur Fry who create the Post-It at 3M, the best way to have your innovative ideas improved by colleagues is to make your idea real with a prototype, mock-up or the simpliest feature.

• by lutusp on 2/11/14, 7:17 AM

  > How to deal with colleagues who like to shoot down innovative ideas from newer guy?

  People who are skeptical of anything not accompanied by evidence are called ... scientists. If you want to adapt, become a scientist yourself -- don't put your ideas forth without any evidence to support them.