It may have been developmentally arrested, or perhaps aborted, if you will. One wants to revive the potential, to will it to actuality, to sustain it, to see it mature. Nurtured by a different parent it will not be the same child as with the one who conceived it. Here the dilemma is flushed. The grey areas and discontinuities are contested.
Film treatments are an example, or art proposals.
Found also begets a certain nobility. That kind of designation has to be placed on some thing, which in effect establishes the status of objecthood onto our found entity, the idea. There is dignity in detritus. Like a trophy, it is manteled. Located in a position of honor, it is perhaps never to be reseen.