Compulsive sharing
Why don’t you put the submitted ideas online immediately?
More than one commenter on this site asked this question in one form or another (often combined with a phrase along the lines of: “You’re supposed to be sharing, but in reality you’re just hoarding. In the new world, hoarding sucks.”).
We had our reasons why we didn’t go down the route of sites such as Dell Ideastorm (which Mike has explained here). Although I initially didn’t agree with this decision, I now think this was the right way to proceed. Our idea contributors would most likely have focused less on their submission – and spent much more time wading through idea posts and related comments (as Ideastorm users need to do: “The Clutter Is Forming: We Need A Moderator” is the title of a very active discussion threat there).
But our intention was never to “hoard” the ideas that have been submitted. We plan to post summaries, each focusing on one theme or group of ideas (like, say, wikis and prediction markets) and it goes without saying that comments on these posts will be more than welcome.
March 19th, 2007 at 6:28 pm
Awesome.
Keep rockin’.
Will
March 20th, 2007 at 3:05 pm
Are you really getting the feedback you wanted? Was this the most appropriate medium to receive feed-back? Well since you have already made the decision let me give you one free idea!!!!!
You already have many long-term trusted readers who have stayed with you through the times why not ask them to tell you how they would want you to change or modify your service delivery. This should be asked through your weekly magazine-which the trusted readers have bought for so long and have derived benefit from.
By now it should be obvious to the well-paid brainy bunch in London that general internet responses will not be from your main clientele and may have no idea what you are asking!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
March 23rd, 2007 at 10:19 am
, that’s exactly what we did do. We contacted not just Economist readers but also users from our other businesses via email and on the websites. We wouldn’t want to run this without asking them. However, we didn’t put it in The Economist magazine as we’d be deluged with responses. Remember, there are just 6 of us here, and if we had to go through 10 000 ideas, we wouldn’t have time for our own thinking. Thanks for your interest.