Awesome idea to product website

Found this recently as Kluster.com went out of business, and got merged into this company. Cooler idea - people submit product ideas, people vote on them, then winning ones actually get made into products and then sold. The idea generator has to pay $99 to get the idea in, then they get some of revenue as the product is sold. People who vote and comment also get some of the revenue. Looks like they are also generating a lot of data.

Quirky.com


Pretty darn cool.

Anti-brand Idea

So much energy is devoted to branding yet so many brands are annoying and have strong weaknesses. Brand Hitmen would be a services company that is hired by companies to target these weaknesses in their competitors. Any number of actions could be taken to erode the brand of the target company including publicly poking fun at its name, leading a negative PR campaign against the quality of the brand, turning the brand name into a synonym for poor quality/something gross/etc., doing things to make the brand cheap/trendy/etc., and so on. An example would be making negative connections between the similar sounds of IP phone company "Vonage", and the word "Bondage" such that every time consumers hear the company name Vonage they think of S&M sex, building (for most people) a negative connotation. Viral marketing tactics would be used for them most part. Everything would be legal, and the focus would be on de-branding rather than corporate defamation, like drawing attention to the fact that the company uses sweatshops for example. The focus instead would specifically be on using the target company's own marketing message against them.

Self-Marketing Idea

Ok so thinking about jobs now - there is so much great creative and idea work that can be done when you are part of a larger whole, and you can work in an area you enjoy. Everything doesn't always have to be completely independent.

Anyway, in getting a job, or even work as a consultant, I had an idea for an interesting way I could market myself:

In New York City there are billboards and signs everywhere to compensate for the fact that people don't watch as much TV. Many of these take the form of maybe 2'x3' posters pasted on walls or the plywood barriers outside construction sites. here's the kicker...
I advertise myself on them. 3-5 different photos of me, with my name, a tagline (possibly "for creative business success"), and a website that leads to a portfolio page of my projects, or simply a resume. It would be fun, funny, and in peoples faces. I could post them outside of leading advertising firms, to advertise back to them that I can come in there and kick ass. The photos would have variety too, one would be of me in a business suit, and depending on how far I wanted to push it, it could range to me in paint splattered clothes as an artist, or me as a rap star with a diamond toothed grill and lots of bling.

A step further would be to cut the tagline and website (or make the website name really small) so it is more of a mystery, and then I just promote myself making my name and face famous. That oughtta generate some valuable opportunities.

Name This

have I ever shared this website? I think it is very good... earlier this winter I made about a hundred bucks naming things, not much money for sure, but it was only a few hours of time, and lots and lots of fun!!

www.namethis.com

Ideation Services Idea

Contract out to companies to help them think of ideas to solve their business (or other) problems. Develop a clear definition of the problem, come up with many solutions, and present the findings in a comprehensible (though probably not comprehensive) manner.

In fact, if anyone needs help in this area, I could certainly pull people together to get perhaps even 1000 ideas to address the problem. After that we would give in depth interpretation and serious assistance implementing/integrating the ideas.

idea business

make a company that finds good business ideas, proves feasibility, does market research and builds the foundations for operations/profitability.. just enough to get risk reduced and information centralized so that it can be sold to companies who might be able to benefit from such a thing. consider doing this on a contract basis as a service - start with an idea and contract for its study, or find areas where companies might be willing to buy ideas and do research there. Question: is this an area where we (i.e. one company) can have a competitive advantage even over a broad range of industries/markets? are there enough companies that would want to outsource this? this seems like a creative bazaar model of collaborative innovation.

entrepreneurship idea

start an entrepreneur training center, that is like an mba program but all experience based. the students will be tasked with starting up to 10 businesses. the first business they will start with no guidance but some assistance, then new businesses are started with more and more direct guidance and specific learning objectives. at the end of the project they are tasked with starting another project, again with no guidance, and there they can express all the skills they have learned. if any business really takes off, the business people are free to leave at any time, and in fact encouraged to do so. payment for this training will be minimal to cover base salaries and costs only but the school will own part of every business started and so will the professors. as the businesses pay off the school will become well funded and the teachers will get paid well, directly in line with the performance of the students. this place will give people a free time away from work to start a business, and allow them to take advantage of student loans. it will also become a place where funders can go to find good investment opportunities, and companies can go for acquisition targets.

another business services idea

patent commercialization services. we don't work the market segment that just has an idea but needs a patent (general consensus seems that this is worked by a bunch of scam artists now anyway so that would not be good to be associated with that). we will work with the technical or creative side of the market that wants to spend more time making ideas and less time commercializing them. target: many patents, 0-3 commercialized already. this might just mean something like an agressive extension of a university's tech transfer office.