I have been in the software development industry for almost a quarter of a century.
I specialised in conceptual marketing and the technical market placement of companies within the R&D department at a now long-defunct company called Georeality CC.
At the time, the company was highly visionary, working with advanced concepts and projections up to ten years ahead of their time. Many of those projections were my contributions.
It is both a gift and a frustration to be able to foresee the future of markets — because unless you can protect your intellectual property, starting your own projects often feels futile.
Trying to encourage people to look beyond the herd and see the world through a different lens is an incredibly difficult art — one I have never fully mastered, and one that has brought me a lifetime of conflict. Even though I have been mostly correct about many critical political, technical & market based issues over a long career. If people won’t listen to you because they are afraid or too comfortable, you become a threat to their security & their belief systems entirely.
Protecting IP is incredibly difficult, especially when you do not have the capital to cover the legalities, patents, and development work required before safely presenting ideas to potential investors.
Unfortunately, I never had access to that kind of funding, so I often sought ways to approach influential individuals in order to sell my prototypes.
Trends were also a major factor in development. Most IT companies — and businesses in general — tend to follow trends unquestioningly. When presented with scientific and logical data that challenges their thinking or established direction, they often perceive it as a threat.
Because I did not go through university, I was unable to form alliances or build networks in the same way many of my peers did. As a result, I focused on helping bring other people’s projects to life rather than pushing my own ideas forward.
Nonetheless, I had several groundbreaking concepts. I am not claiming to have been the only person thinking along those lines — but some of those ideas were, quite clearly, taken without credit.
Typically, what companies do when they steal your IP is attack the concept publicly, highlighting all its perceived pitfalls before beginning their own development.
If you persist, they may then use public relations to turn opinion against you — positioning your ideas as harmful or contrary to the public interest.
This has happened to me several times, and it has become a pattern.
Once your credibility has been undermined, they clone your work, rebrand it, and present it as their own intellectual property.
I fear that this may have happened to me again recently.
While I will not go into the details of what was taken — as I have no desire to open a can of worms — I can say that some of my unseen contributions have influenced several major projects that people now use every day.
Thinking differently is often treated as a liability in business. The reality is that selling a product is rarely about the product itself — it is about persuading people to believe in its value. A modern example of this is the replacement of developers with AI slop systems…this inspiring the development of this website and the various articles that you will find here on my blog
In many ways, markets operate less on logic and more on social alignment. Adoption is driven by trust, familiarity, and perceived legitimacy rather than pure innovation.
Truly original thinking disrupts this dynamic. It challenges existing structures, narratives, and hierarchies — which makes it inherently threatening.
This tension reflects something deeply human.
As explored by Friedrich Nietzsche, social status and shared cultural norms function as survival mechanisms. Throughout history, belonging to the group has been essential for safety and continuity. As a result, societies tend to reward conformity and instinctively resist those who challenge dominant frameworks.
Common culture creates stability. It forms a collective agreement about what is acceptable, valuable, and “true.” Those who think differently risk destabilising that agreement — not necessarily because they are wrong, but because they introduce uncertainty.
From an evolutionary perspective, this resistance makes sense. Groups survive by maintaining cohesion. Individuals who disrupt shared assumptions can be perceived as threats to that cohesion, regardless of their intentions.
Innovation, therefore, is not just a technical challenge — it is a social one.
New ideas do not merely compete with existing products; they compete with identity, hierarchy, and belonging.
And that is why thinking differently is so often met not with curiosity, but with resistance.
I have sought legal counsel in the past in an attempt to regain control of what was taken from me. Unfortunately, doing so is incredibly difficult. It requires significant financial resources — especially when dealing with large corporations that can prolong legal proceedings until your funds are exhausted, or undermine your public reputation through coordinated messaging and social media pressure.
Without going into specific details, I can point to a few areas of innovation in which I was involved:
I influenced a major feature on a social media platform through a product I was promoting on that platform. The feature originated from my own concept, yet when the platform launched something nearly identical, my product was left behind.
I also explored innovation within the transport industry. Before the smartphone era, I built a web-based prototype that performed many of the functions later popularized by through a Hollywood film. I even organised a launch event for a free version with a local creative community to promote the idea. While I never made a sale, the concept was widely praised at the time by the community but pulled apart by corporate that I approached with the idea. A few years later, a remarkably similar model appeared — introduced with the kind of marketing reach I could never access.
I contributed to early shifts in how video game development was marketed. I was among the early adopters of a then-new promotional mechanism and moved quickly to demonstrate its effectiveness. The success of this approach was disruptive enough that it altered internal dynamics within my organisation — ultimately resulting in my removal and loss of platform.
There are other smaller firsts, but my most significant loss remains too sensitive to discuss. It was also the first instance in which I believe my intellectual property was taken.
If there is any lesson in this, it is this: innovation without the means to protect it carries real risk. Bringing a new product to life requires not only vision, but also the resources necessary to safeguard it.
Many people have good ideas — and often at the same time. I may not have been the first to think of some of these concepts, but I did take action: I approached people, invested my own money, and tried to bring these ventures to life. In doing so, I was often treated as a pariah simply because I have always thought differently.
Yet a pattern has emerged. Whether in my technical forecasts or political views, I have often seen my predictions materialist years later — long after I had already lost the original battle to be heard. By the time those ideas took shape in the real world, my earlier efforts had been forgotten.
Nonetheless, I am not trying to be different. I am different. For me, it is simply not a possibility to think like the rest of us.
