THERE IS A BIG DIFFERENCE BETWEEN IDEAS AND OPINIONS as shown by Dustin Staiger.

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on Thursday, December 29 [...]

Visit this post:One Idea Forward, Two Opinions Back on a great blog called Casual Fridays. It’s about the difference between ideas and opinions. This isn’t strictly a fundraising issue, but I’ve noticed in my long association with nonprofits that op…

Laura, great questions. If you look at my descriptions of opinions, most of them are not truly negative words (though I agree a lot of them give negative impressions). I know this is a little controversial, but I tried to soften it a bit with my closing paragraph. Still, what fun would it be without a little controversy (but not just for controversy’s sake).

An opinion in favor of an idea isn’t necessarily a step backwards. What IS a step backwards is the typical number of opinions that have to be sought in order to VALIDATE the idea. Advances in technology have alleviated a lot of these hurdles for enterpreneurs, but not so much for large corporations. I think we’d be befuddled by the sheer number of brilliant and likely successful ideas that are born and killed inside corporations.

You’re right, my list describing opinions is not fact-based. But it is idea-based. It is based on the idea that if opinions and ideas are different (they have differing definitions) then they probably serve two different purposes. The problem is that too few understand that opinions are not ideas. This comparison is the idea I used to try and solve that problem for some of us.

Thanks for extending the conversation and allowing me to clarify.

I find that your definitions/descriptions of opinions to be, ironically, more of your own opinion than fact-based. It only holds true if an opinion is NOT to go forward with a new or different idea. Your list might be less controversial if it were written with neutral language rather than biased language that implies you are “taking sides” with ideas, in the battle of ideas vs. opinions.

Opinions help you narrow your focus as well, which is good. You may have ten great ideas but if you tried to use them all in conjunction with each other, each might become diluted or tweaked to fit together and you’d end up with ten mediocre strategies (once implemented from the idea phase) rather than one great one. Which would you prefer?

They do not have a “killer instinct” (to kill other people’s ideas and views!).They nurture.