Andrew Dubber     

nataliedee.com

Today’s idea… the last in this series of 30 days of ideas is (wait for it): more ideas.

But not just my spare ideas – everyone’s. My idea is for a website where people submit their ideas for others to pick up and run with. And the deal is as it is here: no payment, thanks or credit required.

These are spare ideas and our mission is just to get them out there. No need to sell them, or demand percentages, insist on copyright protection or require that permission is sought.

If you want to do that, this is not the place.

Imagination is its own reward – but win points anyway
When you submit your first idea to the website – as crazy as it might be, as simple or as complex – you are invited to sign up. Other members can then discuss the idea, rate it, fine tune it – or, if they want to go make whatever your idea is, they can press a button to claim it.

And by getting ratings for inventiveness, viability, impact – and bonus points if someone goes and makes something real out of your great idea – you get points. Perhaps you move up through levels. At any rate, there’s a leaderboard.

Of course, if you’re not the competitive sort, or are a bit thin-skinned, you could always opt out of the commenting and rating bit, but otherwise, the rules apply.

Ideas could be tagged so that they could be easily found (whether it’s a website, screenplay, machine, marketing concept, game, software application, bathroom accessory, public transport infrastructure, political intervention, productivity tool, online service or whatever)… and regular and genuinely inventive idea contributors could be easily spotted and perhaps recruited.

But the key to it is the fun of having ideas that may be amazing – but you’re never going to do anything with them, so why not get them out there?

Using other people’s ideas is “unfair”
If you don’t want to give your ideas away because it’s “unfair” if someone else takes it and then goes on to make money out of your ‘intellectual property’, then don’t contribute. Easy. That’s fine.

But I happen to think that ideas are dime a dozen. Hell, I’ve had hundreds just in the past month, and I’ve chosen 30 of them to put up on the blog, a couple to file away that I might do something with myself, and dozens that were just plain dumb.

Besides – when people complain that things are “unfair”, what they usually mean is that things are not sufficiently unfair in their favour.

As Derek Sivers points out, ideas are just a multiplier of execution, and there are literally thousands – possibly millions of them that go unused every day of the week, because people think they’re more valuable than they really are.

And the ironic thing is that even if you have the best idea in the world – if you don’t share it and execute on it, it’s utterly worthless.

So consider this: if you liked some of my ideas – just think how many people out there are having good – and, more importantly, spare ideas all the time. I reckon it’s time there was an outlet for all that incredible creativity.

Naturally – once again, this idea is all yours, if you want to go and do something with it. And I promise you – if you built it, I’d use it.

Tagged: Ideas, Website