(I apologize if this prohibited somewhere in the forum rules—I couldn’t find anything when I looked.)
I would like to extend to everyone here an invitation to my website, ThoughtMarket. Basically, it’s an online marketplace for ideas. I’ve been developing it for a couple months now, and it’s technically in a closed beta at the moment, so not much is going on; however, the essential functions should all work, and I’m updating it nearly everyday. If anyone’s interested in the concept as elucidated on the front page, I encourage you to sign up and start posting or purchasing ideas. It’s a still a work in progress, so I’d very much like to hear any feedback, good or bad (although a suggestion may already be on my to-do list).
As a sidenote, I know many here are against intellectual property on principle (I am too, incidentally), but this actually has nothing to do with it one way or the other. It uses a completely reasonable market-based mechanism to protect a poster’s idea until someone “purchases” it. That said, I did have to add a silly agreement for users posting or purchasing ideas that exists to minimize my liability as far as IP goes.
That’s quite an interesting concept, so I took a look. Is the idea that the ideas would be implemented in business? I think it would help if you gave an example of some historical ideas that could, in some alternate reality, have been proposed on your site and then purchased and implemented. Like Amazon’s one-click ordering.
It seems to me that it is a certain class of ideas that is suited to buying and selling. Perhaps the ideal idea is one that is clearly useful but also needs some specific elaboration so that people will go beyond the abstract and pay for the full explanation.
Well, to be honest, I personally come from a programming-heavy background, so my implementation is probably biased toward ideas in that vein. That said, I think anything can really be posted—you know, the kind of thoughts that make you go, “Oh, huh, that’s a cool idea. I should implement/build/do that.” I like your suggestion about historical ideas… I’ll try to work on that tonight and get some more examples posted.
I’m apparently also unable to edit my original post. I just wanted to say that formal invitations are no longer necessary (anyone can sign up), and a friend of mine started a reddit entry about it, if anyone likes the idea and would like to vote it up.
Reddit post is always a good idea. I’d do it again when the site is more ready.
Concerning ideas, they say your mind will give you more ideas if you take seriously the ones it gives you. If you have a novel thought but set it aside, new ideas will come slower. If you instead ponder it, write it down, develop it, or especially if you implement it, new ideas will come faster.
The problem is writing things down takes time, especially if you’re away from a computer, sometimes you just can’t write, and if you’re a slow handwriter like me the process can end up stifling the idea.
As a solution, I bought myself an IC recorder about a year ago. It’s pocket-sized and holds days worth of content, so I carry it around with me wherever I go and record every idea I have. My experience with doing this really bears out what I said above about new ideas coming faster if you record them. I’ve actually had so many ideas that it’s been almost impossible keep up. My mind has effectively said, “Oh you want ideas, do you? Well then…! …! …!!!” The past year has been a non-stop flow of better and better ideas about all sorts of things.
I actually started keeping it by my pillow when I’m asleep, and probably not coincidentally I’ve started having tons of ideas in my dreams, which I’ll wake up and record then go back to sleep. A few weeks ago I had a dream I was drinking in an izakaya and some guy was correcting some really obscure error in my Japanese that I’ve never noticed. I woke up briefly and recorded it, and later figured out it was true! Pretty cool. Your mind really will give a lot if you encourage it.