The goldmine analogy is palpable, BUT in the case of the mine/property, mineral-rights and land-rights are assigned to only one party. Having the legal and exclusive right to exploit physical properties (esp. when that property has value in the marketplace like gold would) is of course very, very valuable. No one can encroach on your territory for fear of legal repercussion. Aside from defensible patents, I'm not sure an "idea" can ever be treated as a goldmine. No one can be assigned the exclusive right to exploit an "idea". Perhaps film producers may have this right, but even in their case, they've essentially gambled on the bankability of someone's creative mind, and placed a bet, so they might be better thought of as the investor, and not the "idea-holder". I think a better goldmine analogy would be to think of a person's past performance (rather than a single idea), hunger, execution, determination, network, and get'er done attitude as the goldmine - one that will deliver gold more often than not with respect to the rest of the population at large.