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May 16, 2007
Trading on the mind market – buying and selling innovation
May 16, 2007 In many ways it's a dream come true – IdeaConnection is quite seriously offering a penny for your thoughts. The newly launched website is marketing itself as a trading ground for ideas; allowing users to post problems and handpick a team of thinkers varied in age, experience, location and field of expertise to work on the solution. Whether you're an armchair expert or battle hardened industry veteran, you can register to post a problem, propose your ideas, or place yourself in the site's directory, allowing future posters to call on you for assistance. With a price tag of at least US$1000 per problem, the service does not come cheaply – however, by concentrating such a large amount of intelligence and experience into a collaborative community, it is likely the benefits that emerge from the site will far outweigh the costs.
This is really a great idea and it honestly what has been missing from the Internet for quite a while. The free flow of ideas that the Internet allows is basically not being exploited to the level that it should be. It's brilliant to get people together and see what can occur.
Now the problem with it, IP. IP is intellectual property. It's the bane of my own personal existence. Basically companies apply ruthless IP agreements on their employees, which would kill this kind of process. My area of specialization is in computers, but anything I do with computers is technically subject to review and possible control of the company I work for (which is why I don't do any sort of thinking out of the box on that subject). What I'm afraid is going to happen to them is that they are going to have people violating those IP agreements working on projects on the side, trying to exploit some perceived gray area in their agreements and end up causing a catastrophe for the buyer of said ideas. If they do set it up properly to protect the buyer from the IP problem, then it's likely that they won't be able to put the industry experts on it. I don't know it just seems like a troubling issue that they don't exactly address up front. Otherwise, it's a great idea, I can't wait to see if it will work.
Read more over at Gizmag and IdeaConnection.
Posted by Jamison at May 16, 2007 4:17 PM
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