Introducing IdeaWicket….user generated ideation, innovation and inventions

Idea Wicket is a GREAT idea. It is a website for user generated ideation, innovation and inventions. If you have an idea or a conceptual prototype, that you want to share with the world, get feedback about and maybe license or sell it to corporations, this is where you should head. The name IdeaWicket is derived from the words “idea” and “wicket” (a gate or a door); thus the reference is to a gateway for ideas. The website has been launched by a 5 member Delhi based startup.

When you land on the site, you’ll probably take a while to understand what exactly it is and how is it supposed to work. The homepage shows the latest ideas or concepts, that users have submitted. Click on one of these and you will land on a page with the details of the idea – images, tags, views, comments, a url, digg/delicious/ buttons, share, flag et al. Very much Web2.0ish. Then there is the detailed description about the idea, the market, time and cost analysis, the IP details and the intended user benefits. All of this info is packed into a very well designed UI. Check the screenshot below for an idea submitted by a user for streamlining or rationalizing the familiar broadband bill (from Airtel, in this case), something that is usually so confusing and undecipherable that it clearly needs reworking.

The team behind IdeaWicket wants to make this a place, where innovators and corporations can connect to exchange their innovation requirements. Corporations will be able to access the innovations that are relevant to their area of working, post specific innovation requirements that they are seeking solutions for, and contact innovators on the site. From a corporation’s perspective this could work as a very useful augmentation to their own R&D efforts, while sourcing product improvement ideas from their customers and the general public. Its not difficult to imagine a situation where users start posting solutions for everyday products, processes and services that save time, cost and space, increase productivity and efficiency. Why, this has the potential to snowball into a “Wisdom of Crowds” approach to product innovation.

The team may have to deal with tricky issues related to IPR, confidentiality or plagiarism. This is what the FAQ section of the website says in regard to IPR issues.

Ques: Is my intellectual property safe on IdeaWicket?

Ans: It is advisable to take independent legal counsel before publishing a sophisticated innovation online. If you are planning to patent your innovation please note that publishing an unpatented innovation on the web may take away your ability to patent it later. For more information please visit the Office of the Controller General of Patents, Designs, Trademarks for India, United States Patent and Trademark Office, The UK Patent Office or the relevant intellectual property authority for your region. If you are unsure about how much information to disclose it may be best to describe just the merits of your innovation and the needs it fulfills without giving away its inner workings.

Then there is the question of financial viability. They would require a pricing mechanism, that is fair and transparent. I have not been provided any more details about the same. Forgive my speculative instincts, but I think it is likely to be based on a fee to be paid by the company “buying” the idea.

One of the beauties of the Web 2.0 is its accent on harnessing collective wisdom via different genres of user generated content. IdeaWicket (at a conceptual level) extends UGC to the realms of innovations and inventions. And going by the Airtel bill rationalization example, there is no reason why this model cannot appeal to corporations. Every big (why only big, even small ones as well) company never misses an opportunity to brag about their “user centric approach”, or their efforts to “channelize customer feedback into product design” or how they always “listen to their customers”. IdeaWicket provides a simple and elegant platform to drive that noble intent from ‘advertising-speak’ to reality.