Wednesday 28 November 2007

Project: The collaborative bank of ideas

I scribbled down a project idea that has been playing in my mind for a while. I am looking for comments/reactions, as well as help to bring it to life. Everyone is welcome.



Title:

the collaborative bank of ideas (or bank of eureka moments)

Situation:
My experience in advertising is that having good ideas is very
important. I suppose it's the same in many other jobs, but
particularly in those with a high creative component: advertising,
marketing, marcom, design...but perhaps even engineering, science,
architecture, academia...

Problem:
When you have to come up with ideas all the time, you tend to notice
that ideas often come at the wrong time. And by the time you get to
work on them (if you ever get there) they are gone forever.

Example 1: You are working on a new campaign for clothing. It's late
at night and all you can think about is food. And perhaps you have a
great idea for a new pasta brand but you are just too busy working on
clothing to develop it, so that by the time you get to work on pasta
you'll have forgotten your idea. Or maybe you'll simply never find the
time to work on it, and that potentially great idea will never see the
light.

Example2: you are at the pub with your mates and you come up with a
great concept. You think it deserves some work, but you have a drink
too many and by the morning you have forgotten what it was about. Idea
gone, forever.

Solution:
A website, where you can quickly type your idea, maybe by uploading a
video or photo that explains it, or perhaps by just recording a quick
voice message from wherever you are.

Ideas are tagged, so you can find them when you are working on your
next project and you need inspiration.

You can choose to keep your ideas for yourself, on your page, or to
make them public by sharing them with groups of friends or with the
whole wide world (and this is really exciting, because it can become a
big bank of ideas, with a search engine on top!)

Site initially targeted to a particular professional community (eg
advertising) in order to allocate resources, but then can be extended
to neighbouring communities.

Business model:
Initially none: its just for fun. Later perhaps advertising funded or
maybe even auction based

Team needs:
Tech development
Advocates in the industry
Anybody else who wants to help

(update: I just found that it's been done, but it's horrible IMHO http://knownetgrin.honeybee.org/idea_bank.htm)

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