You bring up something I failed to mention: this can be a touchy situation. In your case, it sounds like you have a great customer, but not a sugar daddy. I wou

You bring up something I failed to mention: this can be a touchy situation. In your case, it sounds like you have a great customer, but not a sugar daddy. I would never do something to upset a current customer. You could make them a partner so that they can make a little extra money selling the clever solution they conceived, but that's really hard to do at the enterprise level. That works much better with a small business alpha male owner. Some of the things to consider when taking your sugar daddy's solution to market: Are they enterprise? If so, this probably isn't worth the trouble. Too much red tape and illogical thinking. Does the solution provide them with a distinctive advantage over their competitors? If so, it only makes sense that they'd want to keep it for themselves. If not, they may gain favors among their peers by sharing it. Is is a horizontal solution? Then there's really not much of a competitive threat by sharing it. How opportunistic are they? Some people want to be sugar daddies because they're jealous of our IT margins. They can make as much sharing their technology as they do in their primary business. Does wider use of the technology help their primary business? Some solutions become geometrically more effective if your trading partners are using them too.