Why Sharing Ideas is Better Than Not
A question was brought up at the recent UPA-MN conversation on Web 2.0.
The idea that giving ideas away for free was in some way detrimental to business success. That in fact, sharing is worse than not.
My problem with that perspective is that I also believe:
“…value is in creating the thing, not simply having the idea.” - Brad Feld
It doesn’t matter how many ideas for cool applications and tools I have (there’s a lot) if I don’t launch them. Even if I did launch them, they might not be launched in a way that makes sense for your situation.
This is the benefit of open source projects. When they launch, they solve a specific problem that one group of people have. By making the application freely available, the ideas within it influence the derivations (making the original application more valuable). Otherwise, you’re demanding the rest of the world to reinvent the wheel - just to solve a slightly different problem. That seems pretty snotty.
For comparison, TadaList & Sproutliner.
TadaList is a tiered-access hosted browser-based to do list application by 37Signals.
Sproutliner is an open source, install yourself browser-based to do list application.
Basically the same idea (browser-based to do lists) built by 2 different groups of people to meet the needs of 2 different audiences.
2 Comments
What would a post like this be without a 37’s reference? 37 better
I really enjoyed those 37 better mock ups when they were still doing them.
I like this quote from them:
“..Our hope, however, is that companies we examine will learn from the mistakes we point out and improve their sites for all of their customers. Of course, we’d like to be the ones that help them.”
To bad ‘better for business’ is rarely ‘better for the planet/people’ ;o)
So, Amazon’s one-click order idea. Good idea. Does Amazon benefit from not sharing it with others? I doubt it. If anything, they look like jerks for hoarding common sense.
In the end, no matter how original you may think your idea may be, someone else is thinking it too. Seems to me that both could benefit from talking about it and improving upon it.
[aside...sproutliner is open source now!? GREAT!]