Ideas.com also wrote its own Idea Quests. Those quests were by far the more interesting, including "new personal handheld devices" and "a better election process for the U.S." The Idea Quests from outside companies, in contrast, had a public-relations feel to them. Which was exactly as it should have been, says Jonash. He argues that the real benefit of soliciting ideas from the public is not to get usable ideas but rather to make customers feel like part of the team and to provide market research.
Steven Kirn, former vice-president of innovation and organization development for Sears, agrees that opening up a dialogue with customers is one of the big payoffs of soliciting ideas. "We wanted an effective and efficient way to make customers feel there's a point of contact where they can tell us what they're thinking," he says. But Kirn also insists that Sears was pleased with the results of the Idea Quest. "Out of 130 to 150 ideas sent in, probably about 12 to 15 of them were pretty viable," he says. "That's not a bad ratio of ideas to ideas worth thinking about." The winning idea -- for an improved wet-dry vacuum attachment -- might never have made it to the right person's attention at Sears if it hadn't been for the contest, he adds. "In the past Sears didn't have a consistent way to deal with submitted ideas," he says. "Some might have made it to the fast track, but some probably withered."
Not surprisingly, many entrepreneurs see potential in a marketplace of ideas. Some, like Rob Brazell, coauthor of a 1995 book called The Idea Economy, have focused on mass-market ideas -- that is, ideas aimed at Joe Consumer. Brazell, who founded a site named Ideaexchange.com, says, "I wanted the everyday useful idea that would deliver immediate return on investment to consumers."
The ideas that appear at Ideaexchange range from the mundane (how to keep your shoelaces from untying) to the offbeat (how to improve your singing range) to the esoteric (how to double your cattle yield without cutting your wheat yield). Idea buyers rate ideas. I bought an idea for $5 about how to reduce the number of lost signals on cell phones. I'm prohibited from revealing the details. But I can report that the notion was simple and helped a bit.
People can also post idea requests on the site. I found one from a businessperson looking for an idea for a Web company, another from someone seeking a shark repellent, and one pleading for antiwrinkle secrets. Brazell is convinced there is gold in such trivialities. He charges idea generators for listing an idea for sale; they name their own price for their ideas. The seller splits any revenues with Ideaexchange. Brazell won't disclose revenues or profitability but says he has $22 million to work with, all raised from private investors. By this past summer Brazell had expanded his vision of the company and planned to eventually provide paid content of many kinds, including a deep well of how-to information. He recently purchased the assets of the bankrupt eHow, a site that offers thousands of tips on everything from how to feed an orphaned kitten to how to save money on taxes.
But Goel's more direct competition came from sites like IdeaDollar.com, BrightIdea.com, and NewIdeaTrade.com, all of which are gunning for business-oriented ideas. Those sites don't seem as polished or as well stocked with ideas and idea solicitations as Ideas.com did, but each has its own twist on the concept. It's too soon to say which of those sites will catch on. Niaz Ahmed, founder of NewIdeaTrade, says that his willingness to let businesses access all ideas on the site without paying any fees gives his advertising-supported site a competitive advantage -- at least for the time being. Ahmed, who won't disclose the company's financial details, admits, "How long we'll be able to continue to offer this service for free, I don't know."
Ideas.com's short life is, of course, just about over. Visitors had downloaded more than a million pages by the summer, Goel says. The company had raised a second round of financing but was unable to raise a third. At press time Goel and Singh had laid off all their employees, and Goel was jetting off to London to interview, once again, for banking jobs. But Goel, ever upbeat, still believes in his dream. "One day," he says gamely, "someone's going to make a lot of money from it. It's just not going to be us."
Had his financial prospects allowed it, Goel planned to expand his services. He wanted to set up a branded version of the site accessible through Coca-Cola's Web site; there, visitors would have submitted ideas only to Coca-Cola. Creating branded idea sites was supposed to become an important source of revenues for Goel's company as more and more businesses recognized the value of soliciting ideas but didn't want the cost and hassle of building their own idea-handling system from scratch. And he was working on offerings that would have enabled client companies to set up versions of Ideas.com accessible only to specific groups -- employees, for example, or suppliers and customers or outside professionals likely to be useful contributors. "These companies already spend a lot of money to reach out to these groups for ideas, even though they might already be members of their commu- nity of interest," he explains. In fact, Goel had recently changed the name of the company to Ideation Networks Inc., to emphasize that Ideas.com was just one manifestation of a grander plan to set up many different idea-collection engines.
Steven Kirn, for one, thinks that's the right way to go. "Where I think we're headed is that there will be some problems that we'll want everyone in the world's ideas on, and others where we'll establish relationships with communities of inventors," he says.
