How can you share a great business idea with potential partners/investors without them walking & stealing it?

Let's say you have a breakthrough business idea. And there's immense value in it simply because the idea hasn't found its way in the real world yet. And likely no-one's thought of it just yet, because this idea could have been materialized or commercialized even years ago!!!!! And the idea is simple and would take only a few seconds to describe, though it might take a lot (or perhaps not so much even) of work and money to implement. But the idea is so great that it could easily translate into millions or billions of dollars of new revenues, creating almost an entirely new market in an existing industry. Now let's say you want to capitalize on the value of the idea (which would take just a few seconds to disclose or describe or make known) by shopping for investors/partners/buyers, but which of course would require disclosure of the idea. How would you go about sharing the idea with others and at the same time prevent them from simply taking it and running off with it ?????

I think you should read this article before you do anything with your idea: http://www.entrepreneur.com/startingabus... . Hope this is helpful or at least give you some idea of what to do.

That has always been a problem. If you have a car and I have a car and we trade cars, at the end of the trade, we each have one car.

But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we trade ideas, at the end of the trade, we each have two ideas.

The only way I know to protect yourself is to make them sign a non disclosure agreement (get a lawyer to draw one up), have the witness and notary present when they sign and when they read your idea. The witness and the notary need not have read the idea.

But you are still taking a risk. The guy could go out and tell a buddy and he could tell a buddy and so on and somehow the product gets made and marketed and you don't make any money from the genius of your original idea.

You would have to prove a link between the guy you revealed to and the guy who stole your idea. Not easy to do. I have dozens of product ideas that are locked away because I can't trust anyone to not steal my creative genius.