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Open Sourcing Innovation

Posted by michael on from the dream-big dept.

Super_Z writes "Reading an old issue of The Economist, I came over this - whynot.net - a forum for ideas - effectively open sourcing innovation. Doing so, these ideas can hopefully be adapted faster and on a broad basis. Now if I can only get someone to take up and produce my radarguided laser mosquito trap."

5 of 93 comments (clear)

  1. Cf: GlobalIdeasBank.org by ivi · · Score: 4, Informative

    The Global Ideas Bank has been around for quite a while (in Internet time ;-)

    There are several other, similar sites as well.

    Is there a portal to such sites... yet? :-)

  2. ShouldExist by Nomihn0 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Should Exist has a very strong little commmunity centered on actually carrying out the ideas that they come up with. I seriously suggest checking them out.

  3. Re:Ideas are easy, deeds are difficult by Otter · · Score: 3, Informative
    Anyone can have good ideas, it's actually putting it into practice which is the difficult bit. Intellectual property implies that you can have an idea, patent it and then charge anyone who actually wants to put it into use. You should have to produce a *working* prototype for anything you want a patent on.

    I don't know where you get "implies", but in fact you can't say, "Hey, I thought of a radar guided laser mosquito trap!" and patent it. An implementation is necessary. (If the patent officials do their job properly, which the frequently don't, but that has nothing to do with the validity of the concept.)

    Except for the emphasis on working prototypes, the current system is exactly what you want.

    --
    What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
  4. whynot.com is prior art by tepples · · Score: 5, Informative

    But once product or process ideas are published on whynot.com, this means nobody can turn around and patent the broadest form of the idea. Of course, engineers who implement the ideas can patent the specifics of their inventions, but they can't get a monopoly on what's been published.

  5. related sites by tinkerton · · Score: 5, Informative
    Here is the list of related sites from whynot.net: