The Value of Ideas

When I moved from San Francisco to Doha to start my "academic career" experiment, I was excited about the romanticized notion of academic institutions: places where ideas freely flow and collide to form better ideas, environments where cross-discipline collaborations occur to create new innovations, and people who are driven by the common goals of creating a better world and a better future for all.

What I found so far has left me with much to be desired. Don't get me wrong - these things are still partially true, but not to the extent I had expected.  I am often faced with scenarios where students are "afraid" to openly talk about their ideas to others so they won't get "stolen", where faculty members do not like to discuss their upcoming research proposals with others, and where many final exams still measure what you "know" not what you "can do".

At first I was puzzled by this phenomenon and attributed it to cultural factors. After all, we live in a region (and are within an environment) where "being smart" means higher social status. And having "good ideas" certainly means that you are smart.

But then, it hit me. And as someone who believes very strongly that incentives drive behaviors, I am embarrassed that it took me a while to figure this out. The reason people protect their ideas very closely is that we live in an environment where there is a "market" for half-baked ideas! If you have an idea and you can easily monetize it, why give it away?

When governments, non-profit organizations, or even private companies (trying to play good community citizens) attempt to spur innovations, they immediately think of the now-very-common approach: let's have an "innovation" competition.  And since it is hard and time-consuming to create and structure results-based competitions (they require long-term commitment to monitoring results and hands-on mentorship, it is not possible to standardize the judging criteria, etc.), most competitions end up being events where awards or grants are given to the best ideas and the best plans. For most of our students, participating in these competitions mean: 1. have an idea, 2. do some research work to describe how you would "make it happen", and 3. prepare a decent presentation to wow the judges with your smart idea, good looks, and slick answers to their Q&A.

To be fair, not all innovation competitions are firmly on the "idea" end of the "idea-execution" spectrum, and I have seen a trend recently towards competitions where execution is at least "simulated" if not fully rewarded. Startup weekends and 24-hours hackathons are perfect examples. But still, the opportunities to get rewarded for coming up with "good ideas" are still there in abundance.

One may argue that these "idea" competitions are indeed valuable. They get the participants to think through an idea, prepare an action plan, and present it in front of smart people. So what's wrong with that? This is a very valid argument.

But I believe that there are two fundamental long-term problems that result from the creation of this "market of ideas":

1. It discourages open and free ideazation, brainstorming and collaboration within a community, which are at the heart of innovation. In his book "Where Good Ideas Come From", Steven Johnson argues that good ideas thrive in environments which encourage openness and collaboration. Introducing a market where half-baked ideas can be monetized stifles such an environment. In the Silicon Valley, people freely and openly discuss their ideas in coffee houses and meetup gatherings. They do so for two reasons: to get feedback which helps them improve their ideas, and to recruit smart people to join them in turning these ideas to reality. You do not get funding because you have a good idea, you get funding because you have assembled a great team and are already executing your ideas and showing tangible results.

2. Many innovations today came out of ideas which seemed stupid at first. Tod Francis, a partner with Shasta Ventures, wrote in recent blog post that one key common trait among many of the innovative companies which have reached valuations over one billion dollar recently, is that their initial ideas were easy to dismiss. In other words, they were ideas which would not have had any chance of winning in "idea" competitions. It is a mistake to send a message to would-be-innovators that the only worthy ideas are the ones that pass through judging "experts" to give them validation. 

One of my students recently participated in a regional competition. He was very excited to tell me that an "investor" approached him afterwards. "That's great!" I said. "Did he want to fund your company?".  "No", He said. "He wanted to buy my idea. How much should I sell it for"? I guess this investor will soon learn the lesson that the value of an idea is almost zero if it does not come with a great team that is already committed to making it happen!