My apologies for the volume of blog / rant that I have been spewing lately - have had lots of plane time - ideas tend to form in my head at high-altitude / low-air-pressure (maybe that's a bad thing?)
Some additional thoughts on the innovation opportunities that are staring social app companies like Linkedin squarely in the face (but they don't seem to be doing anything about it)...
I strongly believe these companies could facilitate / spur new idea generation. They could start by launching themed innovation forums which focus on solving "big problems" - these forums could be seeded with existing idea owners that are identified with a sweep of their current users.
Professional facilitators could be brought onboard to hunt for concepts to pursue, monitor the think-tank sessions, and police the "who owns / who contributed what" dynamic. These facilitators could be PT, moonlighting staff - essentially creating a new after-hours / virtual-garage-startup online community. Finding the facilitators could be as easy as targeting the big problem, focus industries within their own existing user community. Measuring their effectiveness would also be simple, think about them like "hedge-fund managers" that chase ideas, find "idea stars" within the community, etc. - metrics related to their idea portfolio and ROI on ideas could be established.
The social net app / company could realize business value by charging idea owners a small fee to launch their concept into the incubator environment; in addition to, claiming a percentage ownership stake in the idea + broker the fleshed out concepts to the VC community.
this brought up an interesting question regarding ownership of thoughts and ideas once posted on a forum or social site. I read an article that Twitter owns rights to the Tweets. So you could yes, identify your "idea stars" but intellectual ownership might be tricky concept.
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