From London Times Yale professors use cyberspace to solve life's infuriating problemsby Sam Coates

HOW can you tell if the car in front is about to come to an abrupt halt? Is there any way to anticipate your pet needing to answer the call of nature? How can you keep your clothes clean in a restaurant without using a bib?

Potential solutions to these and more of life's most infuriating problems can be found on a new website for inventors, entrepreneurs and lateral thinkers started by two Yale professors.

Whynot.net is looking for solutions to everyday household and business dilemmas and has become an internet phenomenon in its first month, attracting nearly a million visitors. Answers have included brake lights that glow brighter the harder you brake, a dog collar that sends out electronic pulses to sense when your pet needs to leave the building, a late-night lavatory flush that is slower but less noisy, and ways in which chewing gum can be made degradable.

The website is the brainchild of Barry Nalebuff, Professor of Economics at Yale School of Management, and Ian Ayres, Townsend Professor at Yale Law School. The aim of their not-for-profit venture is to "jump-start innovation", which they believe has been in decline since the dot-com crash and the September 11 terrorist attacks. It has been set up to coincide with the publication of their book Why Not? How to Use Everyday Ingenuity to Solve Problems Big and Small.

Professor Nalebuff, a Rhodes Scholar who earned his doctorate at Oxford University, said: "Ian and I are optimists. We take the antiDilbert (cynical American strip cartoon) perspective. We had more ideas than we knew what to do with and rather than let them go in the dustbin we thought we'd share them with the world."

For budding inventors, Professor Nalebuff has suggested a couple of techniques to help to come up with ideas. "There are two approaches: the first is starting with the problem and looking for the answer. The other is 'playing jeopardy' and taking a good answer and trying to figure out what the right question should be."

Considering how a rich person would get round a particular problem is a good starting point, he said. Alternatively, take a good idea and try it out in a different context. "So on aeroplanes where you have a family version of an adult movie, why not put it on a DVD to watch at home with the kids," he said.

Almost 3,000 people a day log on to the site, www.whynot.net, despite the warnings of meagre rewards. Their only compensation, the website says, is pride.

"If the concept ends up working, you'll get a healthy shot of 'egoboosic'. 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," Professor Nalebuff said.

"Instead of hoarding these ideas in hopes of a killer payday, why not put them out there and see what happens?"


Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.