Things only get more complicated from there. In most cases, it's not clear up front whether an idea will end up being worth implementing at all, let alone how well the resulting product will sell. "Generally speaking, an idea by itself is worth nothing," says Mel Lazar, managing partner of Lazar Levine & Felix LLP, a New York City accounting firm that specializes in business valuation. "The question is, Can you take that idea and put it into a business in a form that will generate income?" For that reason, Lazar thinks the chances that a company will pay much money for an idea it spots in a Web-site posting are small. And even if it is willing to pay, it will probably enlist a hardball negotiator to get it cheaply. "The average guy would get run over," he says.
Goel doesn't argue with the suggestion that the majority of posters are unlikely to score big financially. But he points out that for many idea authors, money isn't the main point. "A large number of people are very happy just seeing their idea taken to fruition, even if they never get paid for it," he says. "If you come up with an idea for a new windshield wiper and it gets implemented by an automaker and before you know it millions of cars around the world are using it, that's a very powerful experience." Of course, the man who had that experience, an inventor named Robert W. Kearns, spent decades in court trying to get automakers to pay up, eventually receiving $30 million. Still, Goel has a point: the average person who comes up with a modestly good idea isn't likely to hold out for big bucks at the almost certain cost of seeing the idea ignored.
In any case, even if the site had been frequented by the most fair-minded of buyers, the vast majority of ideas posted there didn't seem destined for the big time. Consider this posting, from "skankinARTboy," for a "Wider Salsa Container": Hey tostitos -- i am a lazy college student. I buy nachos and chips all the time, and i personaly hate that i cannot dip my chips into your tiny containers. Half-way empty your container becomes impossible to dip into. I undestand you can pour it out but guess what? America is lazy, and convience is the key to marketing. So shorter but wider container, same glass cost, it hold the same amount and it is better for all lazy people who sit and eat your chips and salsa on the couch.
To help idea buyers skip the junk and root out the gems, Goel worked on "reputation engines" that would have enabled at least some site visitors to rank idea sellers. But he warns that ranking ideas isn't as reliable as ranking baseball cards on eBay. "It's hard to say that an individual who in the past has not come up with good ideas will not come up with good ideas in the future," he says. Conversely, he adds, someone who has had one good idea may not ever come up with a useful idea again. He would not allow sellers to rank buyers. "Everybody believes their idea is very powerful and that it deserves significant reward," he says.
Clearly, posting a random idea in the hope that a company will seek it out and buy it is a long shot. But Goel built some twists into Ideas.com that were intended to strengthen the odds. One was that a company could pay Ideas.com to allow posters to submit ideas for that company only. In fact, of the 50,000 ideas that the site received, 48,000 were such "dedicated" ideas. Unfortunately, many of them were addressed to companies such as Apple and GM that didn't pay Ideas.com for the privilege of receiving ideas. But Goel didn't mind. He used the homeless missives to entice those companies to join.
Of course, corporations have always received unsolicited ideas from eager innovators, and in general it's caused them giant headaches. Ideas from the public tend to be not only less than earth-shatteringly useful but also not unique. ADL's Jonash explains that even in-house ideas typically aren't original. For instance, after a recent productive brainstorming session that ADL had with a corporate client's scientists and managers, research revealed that most of the resulting ideas were already known to the industry. But try telling that to the proud idea submitter who is promptly blown off by a corporate R&D manager, only to see his or her idea appear in a product the next year. Large companies are so routinely hit with lawsuits by such sincere but misguided idea producers that, notes Margolis, many have set up departments whose sole function is to ensure that over-the-transom ideas almost never make it to the desk of any employee who might be working on a similar project. From that perspective, a steady stream of unsolicited ideas doesn't seem like the answer to the business world's dreams.
That's one reason more-experienced inventors and idea producers often turn to intellectual-property agents who shepherd submissions to corporate buyers and negotiate deals. That's all well and good, says Goel -- if you don't mind paying commissions of 15% or more and waiting a year to get an answer. Why not let the Internet do what it's best at? Goel asks -- which is avoiding the need for a middleman and eliminating the friction.
In fact, Goel Offered an even more compelling use of the Internet than giving idea generators a chance to promote their ideas to corporate buyers. He helped companies put their problems in front of idea generators. When a fee-paying company wanted the public to try its hand at coming up with a winning idea, it posted an "Idea Quest." Coca-Cola offered $5,000 each for two Idea Quests: "an energized packaging system" and "a new fun and healthy kids' drink." And Sears ponied up $5,000 for the best idea for "hand and bench tools for the 21st century."
