Photo: PhotoDu.de
Yesterday, I saw a relatively new iPhone app called App Incubator, with which anyone can send in ideas for a new iPhone app. A development team will review the ideas and decide whether to build the application. If they build it and get it into the Apple app store as a paid application, the person who sent in the idea will get a percentage of the revenues.
I haven’t read any of the fine print, but I did start wondering about all the usual questions surrounding new “intellectual property” in the form of ideas: on one hand, it’s easy to feel protective, even secretive, out of fear that someone else will profit from “our” ideas; on the other hand, without sharing ideas, it’s a pretty sure thing that nothing will happen. A Golem-like reluctance to exchange ideas puts too much friction into the innovation process, interest wanes, and development stops.
Even though I’m versed in the issues on an intellectual level, I was surprised to discover how anxious this new application made me feel. It focused a lens on my self-perception: I think of myself as one who can come up with lots and lots of new ideas, and I would welcome rewards in return. I did immediately find myself generating many potential iPhone app ideas, even in my sleep (I woke up with my head full). But I also felt a possessiveness, a hesitation to give these ideas away too readily, even though any idea without its realization wouldn’t generate any financial compensation, anyway.
Everyone comes up with ideas. But the people whose minds seem optimized for the generation of new ideas are usually not the people who find it easy to push through the realization of any one, given idea. Idea generators are nomadic, and idea “realizers” are agricultural by temperament. App Incubator is one model for a partnership between the two types.
Certainly, other models are possible, but any ideas for alternatives will themselves need to be realized. Whether it’s called “bootstrapping,” “it takes two to tango,” “complexity theory,” or “mutual arising,” all beginnings are difficult.