The road to failure

Quoting from patternHunter's blog who quoted Seth Godin who strokes William Beatty's beard ("paraphrases" seemed so - boring, suddenly):

"William Beatty was writing for amateur scientists, but it's pretty global: The road to failure often contains:
1. Secrecy
2. The conviction that someone is about to steal your idea.
3. Focus on selling your idea to the government or a big corporation.
4. Loss of humility and focus on fame
5. Belief that scientists and businesses (the smart ones) will hail your discovery."

Although interesting, I was curious why exactly these characteristics should correlate with failure. I came up with one or two ideas.

1. Secrecy: A lot of important creations are hulled in secrecy - take major corporations' latest products, or patents. In fact, secrecy is what allows them to be successful (by ensuring that someone else will not steal the idea or derail it). But perhaps secrecy becomes counterproductive when more effort goes into it than in growing the creation. Or worse, not allowing it to grow because it is so secret. This could include sharing it with peers who could give constructve feedback.
2. The conviction that someone is about to steal your idea: can be related to the first. Again, a bit of paranoia may not be entirely unhealthy, depending on your circumstances ("just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you" - the X-Files). On the other hand, paranoia and fear go hand in hand, and too much paranoia can hold the mind hostage. Especially the creative mind . Project stalls. Jean-Jacques Rousseau became paranoid later in his life, and lost the plot. On the other hand, Newton was very protective of his ideas, which may have been a good thing.
3. Focus on selling your idea to the government or a big corporation: presumably because you are about as likely to succeed as an ant is to walk through molasses. I.e., wasted effort. Actually, it is funny how many people try to get to the top (for instance) by climbing a corporate ladder in a large bureaucratic organisation. If heading a business is your goal, why not start your own? Then again, maybe it's not your thing ... and you're just doomed to failure. Heh.
4. Loss of humility and focus on fame: The sentence seems to make of humility and fame as an either/or, whereas success can come to someone who has neither. Anyway - I suspect the problem with focusing on fame is that it tends to take you away from working on something that is by itself good, to creating something that is merely good in effect, and for the purpose of winning over a fickle public. I.e., again wasted effort.
5. Belief that scientists and businesses (the smart ones) will hail your discovery: I'm guessing that this applies when the belief means you are making the value of your discovery dependent on your peers hailing it. This creates two problems, firstly if exaggerated you are shifting your attention away from your work towards something outside the area of your direct (or even indirect) influence. Secondly, by paying it heed you may lose confidence and so stop working on your discovery/creation/whatsit. Many writers, for instance, can get really down when there works aren't received favourably by the public or their intended audience. Tender folk, these writers. Nevertheless some great thinkers and scientists maintained confidence in the importance of their discoveries despite not receiving much recognition in their lifetime. If they'd given up, we'd be the poorer for it.

And that ends today's text transmission.