I had an interesting chat earlier today about academic research, links to industry, sources of funding and so on. It was only short, though the central issue is interesting and deep: where should the boundary(ies) lie between retaining information about planned research, and opening the topic up to wider discussion?
On the one hand there's often a commercial need to keep the ideas close to your chest for they are commercially valuable. The alternative view says disclose what you're doing. I'm opting for the latter in my PhD planning. I've posted my current thinking online, it's there for all to see - I don't particularly fear the encroachment of others onto my 'patch', because I'm working in a field where there's plenty to discuss, many contributions to be made. And my thoughts haven't progressed beyond bullet points: there are no hypotheses to test, no objectives to work towards, no research methods to pursue. And not really any commercially sensitive content to protect: a festival is what its contributors make of it, each one is different, each one has its own character. I'm not going to make any money out of this work, so I'd rather create some intellectual capital by thinking the ideas through and setting them out in a reasonably coherent manner. When I share that information with others I'm doing so in the hope of getting a return on that investment, and I'm not relying on any quick profits.