My toothbrush is better than yours

Even if your toothbrush is newer, cleaner, fancier, more colorful, electrically powered or emits ultrasonic wave, I still prefer mine. After all, why would I want to use someone else’s toothbrush. Yuck!

This is fine if we are just talking about toothbrushes but in reality, we have the same concept towards other peoples’ ideas. We tend to prefer ideas we came up with rather than those from others. This is known as the Not-Invented-Here bias or the Toothbrush Theory.

The Toothbrush Theory — Everyone wants a toothbrush, everyone needs one, everyone has one, but no one wants to use anyone else’s

In the book The Upside of Irrationality by Dan Ariely, he talks about how we value ideas we came up with more, even if it is exactly the same as someone else’s. He crafted experiments where people were asked to generate solution from a pre-determined set of words. He seeded these words in such a way that every possible solution have the exact same meaning. As you probably guessed, people still prefer the solution they crafted themselves.

Entrepreneurs are prone to this bias because they are inherently optimistic about their ideas. Why else would they quit their job and pursue some crazy untested venture? These are people who fall in love with their idea and decide to dedicate their life to making it a reality. They really do think their toothbrush is better than yours.

In many cases, they are right and their ideas turned into multi-billion dollar empires. However, for the rest of us, we may have over-estimated how cool and awesome our toothbrush really is. But fret not, there is a way or rather ways for us to really make sure our toothbrush is as great as we think it is.

Share your toothbrush

First we have to accept that we will have to share our ideas with others. As the saying goes, ideas are worthless, execution is everything. An idea can’t change the world unless it is brought to life. Since we want to make sure our ideas are worth the time and effort, we will have to get some feedbacks and validation.

Talk to your family members, friends, colleagues or potential customers of your idea. You’ll be surprised how many ideas are founded on wrong assumptions and can be invalidated by simply talking to someone else. Don’t be sad if you found out your toothbrush was nothing more than a regular piece of plastic. At least you didn’t bet your life on it and if you are lucky, you may get some new insights for your next killer toothbrush.

Make sure they really need a toothbrush

We also have to be wary about how we are pitching our ideas to others. We don’t want to shove our toothbrush down their throat. It’s not a very pleasant experience and we actually want them to do the talking.

Most ideas are really just solutions to non existing problems. We may think our toothbrush is the one our customer deserves but unfortunately it is not the one they need. Be open to their suggestions and feedbacks. We may learn a thing or two about them and maybe next time, we’ll have the toothbrush they need.