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Idea Stock Exchange

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Sun Mar 26, 2006 03:01 PM
from the soylent-futures dept.
Businesses IT
Retrospeak writes to tell us The New York Times has an interesting article on an interesting business strategy used by a company called Rite-Solutions. The system recognizes the need for harvesting ideas from the entire company instead of just one or two "idea-men" in a stock-market-esque idea exchange. From the article: "We're the founders, but we're far from the smartest people here," Mr. Lavoie, the chief executive, said during an interview at Rite-Solutions' headquarters outside Newport, R.I. "At most companies, especially technology companies, the most brilliant insights tend to come from people other than senior management. So we created a marketplace to harvest collective genius."
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  • Hey (Score:5, Funny)

    by smvp6459 (896580) on Sunday March 26 2006, @03:03PM (#14999060)
    Can I sell ideas short?

    • Re:Hey (Score:4, Funny)

      by B3ryllium (571199) on Sunday March 26 2006, @03:26PM (#14999147) Homepage
      They call that "marketing".
    • the most brilliant insights tend to come from people other than senior management

      I thought this was always the case.

      • Re:Hey (Score:4, Insightful)

        by moro_666 (414422) <{kulminaator} {at} {gmail.com}> on Sunday March 26 2006, @04:28PM (#14999359) Homepage
        Re:

        "We're the founders, but we're far from the smartest people here," Mr. Lavoie, the chief executive, said during an interview at Rite-Solutions' headquarters outside Newport, R.I.


          Admitting to the reality is actually a vital sign of the intelligence in the leadership. If you'd hire people more stupid than you in any intellectual business, you're f-d.

          I wish my boss would consider this fact in some areas more often :) I think it's a quite normal case in any IT company, the bosses are "oldschoolers", meaning sure they know how a pic cpu works and how perl text databases are cool, but their knowledge doesn't always map to the current situation out there. Transaction rdbms is the word, not a text database.

          I do understand that the bosses in situations like that usually do realize that their workforce is more talented or at least more up-to-date in the expertise, but unluckily for the workers, the selfpride of the bosses preceeds the rationality that you'd expect.

          Anyway, seems like one company (at least officially) is trying to fight the /disease/, i hope they do well and give a good example to the others.

          Ps. how would you fight this "pride" issue ? My current strategy is either to explain very calmly my selections in development paths or if that fails, just go along and point the primary reason out when it starts to fall apart... Humans are supposed to learn most from their "personal" failures.

  • Japanese methods? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CarpetShark (865376) on Sunday March 26 2006, @03:04PM (#14999065)
    Didn't the Japanese have methods like this way back in the 80s??
  • My ideas most involve inflatable sex toy, small rodent and chocolate spread. Where do I sign up?

  • A market for innovation (Score:5, Insightful)

    by LadyLucky (546115) on Sunday March 26 2006, @03:06PM (#14999078) Homepage
    Just as stock exchanges and other markets have created the flow of money that has been the foundation of modern capitalism and the greatest wealth engine in the history of mankind, a market for innovation may well be the next step.

    How often is the person with the idea and the vision the guy with the business smarts to capitalize on it? How often does a company with excellent execution thirst for the next big idea? A marketplace for ideas and innovation is possibly the solution to this.

    It may be unpopular here, but in order to make such a market work properly, it's necessary to have the necessary protection for ideas and innovations - i.e., intellectual property laws need to be improved. That isn't to say that draconian laws are needed, but if I have an idea, I need a reasonable expectation that I will not get fleeced by offering it on a marketplace.

    An efficient innovation market backed up by appropriate laws may well be the next driver of wealth.

    • How often is the person with the idea and the vision the guy with the business smarts to capitalize on it? How often does a company with excellent execution thirst for the next big idea? A marketplace for ideas and innovation is possibly the solution to this.

      Same thing with science. There are a lot of brilliant scientists who spend their time researching really trivial stuff because they can't think of anything better. And at the same time, there are a lot of people with great ideas of research projects who
    • I have a hundred ideas every day. It's easy to come up with ideas. The hard work is in trying to figure out if the idea is feasable, gathering resources, manufacturing, marketing, etc.

      Your system would allow anybody with an idea to instantly stop anybody who is actually trying to accomplish something by working. It rewards the people who sit on their ass all day and type their goofy ideas into a web site hoping somebody actually tries to make something some day.

      That's the problem with patents. It punish peo
      • Reminds me of an article [oreillynet.com] by Derek Silvers (creator of CD Baby).

        "To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions."
      • I agree completely -- ideas are cheap.

        In my experience, people who argue for stronger "IP protection" and the possibility to trade with ideas are often those with few ideas of their own (and hence think there is great value in them, I guess).

    • Here in the UK, the last thing companies want is new ideas. They all tell you they have enough ideas already. "F#@% off with your new ideas - we have enough already" is what management, especially financial management will tel you.

      If anyone wants ideas enogh to actually pay money for them, let me know. (I mean good, sound engineering ideas that will make someone a million dollars a year or maybe a billion. This is engineering - actual long-term investment required.)

      • Here in the UK, the last thing companies want is new ideas. They all tell you they have enough ideas already. "F#@% off with your new ideas - we have enough already" is what management, especially financial management will tel you.

        That's not just a problem in the UK. Many, many American companies have the same attitude, which is why it's so important to have a relatively free market, so that new competitors can emerge to better serve their customers.

        If anyone wants ideas enogh to actually pay money for the
    • Markets are fascinating. Already they've been used to predict flu outbreaks with greater accuracy than experts.
      The Iowa Electronic Markets [uiowa.edu] is very interesting and in the UK there's a growing trend to use betting markets on political events to predict results.

      Of course markets fail, and this one may, but its definitely worth a go, especially if it can be linked to implementing the idea somehow.
      • I think you've misunderstood what happened here. The only thing in that comment that is related to the article is the word "Stock Exchange." It is clearly a prepared comment just waiting for a slashstory with the words "stock exchange" in it.

  • It's a trap! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Jester998 (156179) on Sunday March 26 2006, @03:08PM (#14999088) Homepage
    We're the founders, but we're far from the smartest people here

    Anyone who submits an idea gets labelled "not a team player" for not backing management's ludicrous schemes.

    It's a trap!

    [/end Dilbert-esque paranoia]

  • Idea Stock Exchange (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26 2006, @03:13PM (#14999104)
    I'm going to short neoconservatism.
    • I wouldn't. If history has taught us anything, it's that old, rich, white conservatives never get what's coming to them. They just end up older, richer, whiter, and more conservative.

  • Art by committee... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by IanDanforth (753892) on Sunday March 26 2006, @03:15PM (#14999110)
    The difficulty in any system like this is what I like to call the Artistic Paradox.

    Great art comes from experience and talent. It almost always comes from the vision of a single individual. Truly fine art cannot be done by committee.

    Thus while brilliant and committed people in business need the ideas of those people around them, a system like this can only serve as an inspirational tool for those people with talent. The idea is not the art, the execution of that idea is.

    I have lots of great ideas, but no matter how many I give out, or see on the web, few, if any, ever get done. Why? Because I'm lazy.

    This marketplace could easily give rise to dependence on it for ideas, and ignore the fact that people who can get things done often don't have the best ideas, but because they can accomplish them, are infinitely more valuable than the armchair quarterbacks scattered throughout a company. And asking people to implement ideas other than their own, even if they are objectively better, reduces a talented individuals ability to great true greatness.

    -Ian
    • Great art comes from experience and talent. It almost always comes from the vision of a single individual. Truly fine art cannot be done by committee.

      While not quite a committee, how 'bout remixes -- hip-hop, mashups, or otherwise? I'm sure there's some sort of exception to allow for that. Afterall, remixes are quite popular, some are quite artistic, if not so long lasting. [wikipedia.org]

    • this is a win for everybody (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Schlemphfer (556732) on Sunday March 26 2006, @03:47PM (#14999226) Homepage
      >This marketplace could easily give rise to dependence on it for ideas,
      >and ignore the fact that people who can get things done often don't
      >have the best ideas, but because they can accomplish them, are
      >infinitely more valuable than the armchair quarterbacks scattered
      >throughout a company.

      Those people you're mentioning who "get can things done," -- isn't it to their interest, and everybody's interest, that they are implementing the very best ideas available? It's not like anybody's suggesting that these people be fired -- if anything the value of what they're able to produce increases as they are given better projects to see through to completion.

      And those "armchair quarterbacks" -- this term seems needlessly insulting, by the way -- if these quarterbacks are able to come up with the very best ideas in the company, shouldn't they receive all the encouragement in the world to dream up new ideas? And shouldn't they share the spoils of this success with the people who can implement these great ideas?

      Seems to me that this stock exchange idea is win/win/win for the GTD people, the quarterback people, and the company as a whole.

  • That's right, good ideas don't only come from one person in the 'idea department.' If this holds true, and people aren't punished for speaking up, they may be much better for it -- and be able to monitize those ideas. Many companies I have worked for in the past, have an 'open door' policy with opinions, ideas, and better ways to do things. Not once have I ever heard a success story from someone piping-up. Didn't someone say something about hiring people smarter than you?

  • Google (Score:4, Insightful)

    by binkzz (779594) on Sunday March 26 2006, @03:20PM (#14999127) Homepage Journal
    Isn't that what Google already does, with their personal project time and whatnot? That's how GMail got started, and Picasa, and probably a few other things.

    • Re:Google (Score:2, Informative)

      by bheer (633842)
      Isn't that what Google already does, with their personal project time and whatnot? That's how GMail got started, and Picasa, and probably a few other things.

      Google has done some good things, but please don't give them more credit than due. Picasa was acquired [google.com].

    • Re:Google (Score:3, Informative)

      by FleaPlus (6935)
      Isn't that what Google already does, with their personal project time and whatnot?

      I'm not sure what personal-project time has to do with having an internal ideas market, but Google does coincidentally have an internal prediction market, which they described in their official blog last year [blogspot.com]. From the description:

      At Google, we're constantly trying to find new ways to organize the world's information, including information relevant to our business. Building on the ideas of Friedrich Hayek and the Iowa Electron

  • A great idea (Score:5, Insightful)

    by argoff (142580) on Sunday March 26 2006, @03:29PM (#14999159)
    Believe that patents and copyrights are sewage, and act on that belief accordingly.

    If you did, you would have seen that the internet is more than a passing fad (1992), that Linux
    was more than a "toy" os (1996), that the x86 architecture and the IBM compatable PC was going
    to take over the market place(2000) inspite of it's original inherent design flaws. That p2p was going
    to explode in usage, that ethernet would win out over Novell, and Token-Ring despite being
    "technically" inferior. Plus you would have been able to anticipate the technology explosion
    that happens every few years when a new technologies 18th annaversary approaches and patents start to
    run out.

    All to often, a companies version of a great idea is something that they can patent, sit on,
    and collect royalities on without any real application usage or work. Well, bullshit - it's just
    the opposite. A great idea is something that proliferates and spreads in usage freely, without
    restriction.
    • When the hell are you fucking morons going to realize that intellectual property protects the EXPRESSION of an idea, not the idea itself? This is a very basic concept and withoutunderstanding it we get the mindless crap often repeated on Slashdot like that from the parent thread.

  • In the age of... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26 2006, @03:29PM (#14999162)
    ...employment agreements where the employer claims dominion over something the employee thinks of when he's taking a dump in his house during his Christmas vacation, I don't see how anyone would be trusting enough to throw their good ideas out for the taking like that. What if the company takes your idea and makes billions with it? What's to prevent the company from screwing you from a compensation standpoint?
  • There are plenty of online exchanges for info and ideas, even problems that need solutions that link corporate R&D, Universities, and individual scientists. This is how a lot of companies innovate today - through collaboration, called C&D.

    Here's a few:

    ninesigma.net
    InnoCentive.com
    Yet2.com

  • Oh great, a ponzi scheme but with ideas.
  • The system recognizes the need for harvesting ideas from the entire company [...] so we created a marketplace to harvest collective genius.
    We call it "The Matrix".
  • I dunno if a stock market is the best way to model this, it feels more like a futures market to me.

  • "Idea Futures" (Score:4, Informative)

    by samkass (174571) on Sunday March 26 2006, @04:59PM (#14999462) Homepage Journal
    Really early in the Internet's history (about TEN YEARS ago!!!) there was a site called "Idea Futures" that did exactly what this article describes. It was pretty fun... I wonder if it's the same folks.
  • This and other business plans sources can be found in the book The Wisdom of Crowds [amazon.com] by James Surowiecki.
  • When Pentagon tried this [pbs.org] to help predict the outcomes of and details of conflicts, terrorist acts, etcaetera, the project went down in flames amid accusations of "trading in blood and destruction" and similar nonsense.

    The idea is not entirely dead yet, and so the opposition continues its histerical "criticism [hangoverguide.com]" of it...

  • More on prediction markets (Score:4, Interesting)

    by FleaPlus (6935) on Sunday March 26 2006, @08:46PM (#15000119) Homepage Journal
    I'm happy to finally see a slashdot story on prediction markets [wikipedia.org], like the one described in the article, as they're one of the neatest new concepts I've come across. They've shown themselves to be on average the most accurate way to predict future events, more accurate than, say, individual experts or opinion polls. Having people "put their money where their mouth is" greatly improves the quality of predictions.

    If you've never seen a prediction market in action before, I highly recommend checking out the real-money Intrade [intrade.com] market, or the virtual-money Foresight Exchange [ideosphere.com]. At such markets you can get estimated probabities for almost any major event. Here's a few examples from Intrade:

    * Sony Playstation 3 release before October 6: 33% chance
    * Hillary Clinton to be the Democratic Presidential Nominee in 2008: 43.1%
    * John McCain to be the Republican Presidential Nominee in 2008: 36.6%
    * Osama Bin Laden to be captured/neutralised by 30 June 2006: 5.7%
    * Donald Rumsfeld to announce his resignation on/before 31Dec2006: 18.5%
    * Bird flu (H5N1) to be confirmed in the USA ON/BEFORE 31st December 2006: 70.0%

    That said, I think the company described in the article can probably improve the way they handle their pay-offs. From the article:

    At Rite-Solutions, the architecture of participation is both businesslike and playful. Fifty-five stocks are listed on the company's internal market, which is called Mutual Fun. Each stock comes with a detailed description -- called an expect-us, as opposed to a prospectus -- and begins trading at a price of $10. Every employee gets $10,000 in "opinion money" to allocate among the offerings, and employees signal their enthusiasm by investing in a stock and, better yet, volunteering to work on the project. Volunteers share in the proceeds, in the form of real money, if the stock becomes a product or delivers savings.

    The wording in the article is a little ambiguous, but it seems that if you choose to bid on an idea which you "know" is good, and would be if it were selected as a product, if other people don't agree you lose your money. It would be better to have a system where if the stock isn't selected as a product, you get your money back. If the product is selected, you gain money if the product does well, and lose money if the product does poorly. This also adds an incentive for people to "short" popular ideas that they think are going to perform poorly.

  • Idea Theft? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by supremebob (574732) <themejunky@geoci t i e s.com> on Sunday March 26 2006, @09:21PM (#15000235) Journal
    I'm curious... What kinds of protections are built into this idea exchange to keep people from stealing one person's Billion dollar idea and then patenting it as their own? I'd hate to see some greedy bastards using this site, and end up creating the next SCO or Rambus style legal dispute.

  • We tried to get HP to do this... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Baldrson (78598) * on Sunday March 26 2006, @11:10PM (#15000548) Homepage Journal
    But it was shot down by management.

    I'm not kidding.

      • It was during the transition to Carly but it never got high enough up to be directly attributable to the executive suite.

        Indeed, executive decision support systems like this are precisely what the executive suite needs and it tends to be the layers just below them that are the most resistant so it's a catch-22. The executives typically have the mentality of the stock analysts and their immediate underlings are all-too-aware that upon this weakness their jobs depend.

        • Indeed, executive decision support systems like this are precisely what the executive suite needs and it tends to be the layers just below them that are the most resistant so it's a catch-22.

          I find that weak managers tend to be afraid of letting any negative information get past them to senior management. If the CEO can look at the idea futures and see that most of the rank-and-file are betting on a later ship date than the first-line managers are telling them, he's going to ask why.

          It would be a fascinati
    • Ideas don't come for free

      Uhmm.. I just got an idea.. absolutely for free...
      Nobody can make me pay to use my brain.

      What are you? A commy? *shifty eyes*
    • I dunno about you, but Rite-Aid got bought the fuck out here in Memphis. All the stores I've seen that belonged to Rite-Aid now have Walgreens signs plastered all over them. I fail to see how they're going to survive much longer without some major help.

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