Hi everyone,
Hope you are having an enjoyable holiday season. I want to ask you all for advice in writing a proposal/inquiry email about a new idea:

1) How safe is it to send new, original ideas in proposals/inquiry emails? I've already sent watered down versions of a new idea that I had, but haven't received positive responses - probably because I diluted it too much. I don't want my idea taken, because I believe it has a certain amount of novelty. But then, how do I present it as a powerful idea worth exploring?

2) Would you still be able to use an idea for pursuing PhD if you patent/publish it already? While I'm desperate to continue PhD, I'm also desperate that no one gets to this technique first. I've noticed a lot of researchers in literature dancing around the idea especially recently. I'm thinking of contacting my former supervisor and asking if we could look into patenting it. If it isn't patentable, I would like to publish it. But would that stop/delay me from pursuing it as a PhD topic in a university elsewhere (IP rights, etc)?

Would be really grateful for any advice. Thanks!

My suggestions:

1) Don't give too much details to avoid idea theft and boring them with long emails- just confine it to main topic, sub topic, and a line on what you're investigating.
I'll give you an example from my field: if it's Economics, and you're looking at Economic Development, restrict your email to mentioning these of course and say that you're interested in applying a certain methodology or theoretical framework to trade/aid relations between developed country X and developing country Y. They don't need to know the whole story just yet.

2) If you've published it already then no it's not original and you can't use it, at least not as the focus of your study. Now you can take this idea and try to apply it to a different situation. As I'm probably in a different field from you I'm not sure about patenting. But if something's already published the rule is that it lacks the originality required from a PhD thesis.

Im not sure I agree about not giving everything away. As my supervisor said to me when I first approached him. He gets hundreds of proposals every year but mine showed enough originality to get his attention and so he contacted me directly, and I then got a scholarship and am working with him on PhD now. I think makes sense to want to guard your idea, but if you want to do a PhD and get scholarship, think you would have to trust people you approach not to steal you idea. As they are not mind readers so if your dilute your idea they will prob think that's the best you can do, and so why would they give you a positive response