I find it interesting that Mueller only received $25,000 for solving the chemistry problem. He probably saved the company much more than that. Its great companies can find cheap solutions this way, but how long is it until people figure out they can get more. I foresee people like Mueller asking for royalties for solving a company’s problems. I would ask for a percentage of the money saved each year from my idea.
Innocentive is a interesting idea for cheap consulting. I think part of the reason for its success though is that it goes outside corporate culture. Many companies train employees to think a certain way, which I think constrains creativity, and results in the need for outside help to solve problems.
Ideagoras are interesting, but are they truly global? I am willing to bet most of them are located in the Western hemisphere. I think this is just a new tool in a company’s arsenal, rather than being a new wave. Several questions arise from this new way of doing R&D. Who owns the ideas? The person, the company or the intermediary? What prevents countries like China from stealing the patents that are put on-line? A foreign company could license the patent, reverse engineer it, then make enough changes to file a new patent.
I can see new developments in IP from Ideagoras. You will start to see companies that solely do R&D and then sell it to the highest bidder. You sort of see this with universities. I also foresee people being able to trade patents and trademarks on an pen market, similar to securities.
2 comments:
Though I believe Innocentive is a great idea and helps companies and individual scientist to bond, the book only talks about the good things . it never spoke about anything that had a negative impact.
I am with you on the issue of Ideagoras and companies would just do R@D and sell their ideas to the highest bidder.
As far as Mueller getting only $ 25,000, might be because it could be worth only so much or may be he got a better deal by finding someone to sell his ideas faster.
I would agree that once people figure out how to market their ideas, they will command more money. The problem though is that unless you have inside info, you don't know the exact specifications of what a company is looking for. Also the super brilliant people coming up with these really advanced solutions probably don't have that much business sense. I think that there a lot of people out there who probably don't even know that their research could be profitable through one of these websites.
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