Making Ideas Take Flight

Open-source works for programmers and scientists. Now the rest of us should use it to turn our natural ingenuity into real products and services.

By Ian Ayres and Barry Nalebuff, October 2003 Issue

By and large, Americans are optimists. We like to believe that anything is possible. Conquering polio, traveling to the moon, and creating the World Wide Web are but a few notable examples of the triumph of the American imagination.

 

Making Ideas Take Flight

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Alas, with the dotcom crash and the terrorist attacks of 9/11, our optimism has flagged. Now our spirit of ingenuity needs reviving. Robert F. Kennedy famously challenged us to "dream of things that never were and say, 'Why not?'" By allowing ourselves to dream, we lift not only our morale but our economy too. To jump-start innovation again, we need an open-source movement for ideas.

Linus Torvalds proved the power of unleashing intellectual property when he posted the source code for his Linux operating system on the Internet. The same approach -- giving away ideas -- could be a powerful engine of economic and social change. In our new book, Why Not?, we offer up hundreds of ideas for new products and services, and put them out there free and clear for the taking.

Of all the ideas in Why Not?, the biggest is our desire to incite a why-not movement. It starts at www.whynot.net, an online forum for people to share and talk about their ideas, be they big or small, practical or blue-sky. Which ones do you like and why? How could they be improved? The site is literally an idea free-for-all, where participants can help develop each other's brainstorms, notions, and shower-time inspirations.

Why should you join in? Well, for starters, there's the fact that we all have more ideas than we can ever act on. So you might as well share the ones you'll never get to. (We're not saying you should put all your ideas out in the public domain. Barry, for instance, is the co-founder of Honest Tea and also helped bring home-equity insurance to market, yet -- as evidenced by our book -- he had plenty more ideas rattling around in his brain.) Also, keep in mind that there's a big difference between a good idea and a good business. Just because you have a marketable concept doesn't necessarily mean you should launch an entire company around it. Take, for example, a home mortgage that automatically refinances as rates fall. While this might be a salable idea, starting a new business around it would be silly. A major bank could too easily duplicate the offering and use its superior brand and distribution to squash you.

So, what do you get out of sharing your ideas? Well, if the concept ends up working, you'll get a healthy shot of egoboo. Imagine how good you'd feel if you found a way to eliminate spam, or to reduce teenage driving accidents, or to make it easier for people to contribute to charity. Instead of hoarding these ideas in hopes of a killer payday, why not put them out there and see what happens?

 

egoboo (ee-goh-boo) n. Recognition and praise for a task well done, particularly a task that is performed for free.
Source: www.wordspy.com

Besides, you don't have to start a new business to profit from knowing how to innovate. For one thing, while the company that implements your idea might not pay you for it, it might just hire you on as a consultant. Plus, constantly looking for new and better ways of doing things is a highly valued skill. Though we live in a high-tech world, innovation need not be left to scientists and engineers. The potential for everyday ingenuity is all around us. Bette Nesmith, for instance, invented Liquid Paper while working as a secretary. She wondered why artists could paint over their mistakes but typists couldn't. Then, of course, there's good old Ben Franklin: He wasn't a physicist or a mechanical engineer, but he nonetheless invented or reimagined the lightning rod, the odometer, bifocals, the rocking chair, and daylight savings.

It's our hope that Whynot.net will make it easier for good ideas to be heard -- for people to challenge the status quo and say, "Here's how to do it better." As Gandhi once said, "You must be the change you wish to see in the world."