It is an interesting question, and to clarify, I am talking about the process of taking a promising idea or invention and bringing it to the commercial market (note that invention is an entirely different topic altogether – Innovation Zen has is a nice article on the difference).  Our goal at Fluid Innovation is to create a market for connecting idea creators to implementers.   The general concept is not new, ideas have been turned into innovation since the dawn of time.  What is evolving today is adding a process to the madness so that more ideas can be evaluated quicker, at lower cost and then efficiently shared with people and organizations that are best positioned to turn them into innovations.  This is not as easy as it sounds, some of the key elements that need to be integrated include:

Idea Capture-  Obviously the quality of the idea is important, the better the idea, the larger the market and the closer it is to market readiness the better.  However, we have found that when sharing ideas with implementers that quantity is also important.  Implementers like to evaluate several opportunities at the same time as it is easier to compare and contrast and they are more likely to invest focused effort on the evaluation process.

Merchandising the Idea- Quite simply, if you want someone to consider investing in an idea you need to provide the implementer with the right set of information and it must be communicated in a way that makes it easy for the implementer to quickly determine if it is a fit with their plans.  This ties into how you capture ideas, set expectations and streamline transactions. 

Evaluating the Idea for Viability and Value- The traditional model is to ask an expert.  We think Michael Mauboussin at Legg Mason/Columbia is right on with his “Expert Squeeze” concepts highlighted in his recent HBR article, especially due to the evolution of crowd wisdom and social networking fundamentals.  We launched VirtualVentures last year to begin to build a platform to collect market feedback, we still have work to do in this regard but are moving forward with creative new approaches.

Matching and Sharing- As more ideas filter into the system is becomes increasingly more important to effectively match the right ideas to the right implementers.  This is where a combination of technology and relationships begins to play a key role in the process.  A new version of FluidInnovation.com is due out next month and will be a first step to integrate our patent pending matching technology into this part of the process while making it easy to search, view and connect available technologies to qualified implementers.

Streamlining Evaluation- If successful in capturing the right information at the Idea Capture stage this leads to consistent and complete merchandising of the opportunities.  When you combine this with community feedback and networking, hopefully the right information will be presented to the potential implementer that enables them to quickly determine fit and interest.

Expectations- Now here is where it all comes together, it is imperative that proper expectations for deal type, time-lines, value and process are clearly established for both the buyer and seller to improve the likelihood that a successful transfer of an idea to innovation to evolve.

So, how to scale it?  All that is necessary is to tie all these moving parts together into a simple, easy to use system…..we have learned a lot so far but still have work to do - so any ideas you may have on helping us build this vision into reality are appreciated.