The fourth in a series about the submissions we received.

Alan Hansen was proved wrong and a few of our contributors think otherwise too.

A fair number focused their ideas on a younger audience than The Economist currently enjoys. These fell into two areas - the first focusing on providing a version of The Economist for kids and the other on their educational needs.

As James Toomey and Chris Redmann pointed out, there is a feeling that The Economist creates content that “is over the head of younger readers” and that the web provides the opportunity to address this without incurring significant distribution costs. Daniel Collender suggested that “The Economist should start building brand loyalty at an early age by creating products and services for young people that will help develop their minds”.

Publications that aim to educate and enlighten younger people exist around the world, from Piers Morgan’s FirstNews, the Newspaper and the digital Newsademic in the UK, to Le Petit Quotidien in France, Time for Kids in the US and the Little Masters in China (a bi-weekly with a circulation of 1 million). Then, in Germany, there is the best-selling Kinder-Uni book series, that have given rise to lectures targeted at children. However, the quality of these publications varies, so there might just be a way for The Economist to plug a gap.

The suggestions are for something that young people would want to read rather than something that they would have to read as part of their coursework or that is aimed at their teachers. This last distinction was also a key to the BBC’s Jam service which was suspended last week under instruction from the BBC Trust. There has been widespread condemnation of this decision because of the lack of a serious alternative and more importantly because the 170,000 people that we using it have lost their work, so maybe suggestions that fall into the second area around coursework and curriculum development have some traction.

Caroline Meeks, a founder of .LRN, an open source learning management system pointed out that “Universities are producing and distributing for free a remarkable amount of content but adoption is lagging behind because it’s not in a particualarly usable form nor is [it] being marketed”. MIT’s OpenCourseWare (OCW) was cited by Caroline as an example and in the UK, the Open University’s (OU) OpenLearn similarly puts course material online for anyone to access.

MIT’s OCW, though initially funded by Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, is very patchy in its coverage with no content available for some modules within courses and some consisting of no more than an unenlightening single side of A4. The Open University’s coverage is better with the material that is online at least being complete. However, although the OU enables collaboration, the material is somewhat dry.

Using a community of teachers to create a curriculum plus teaching materials is suggested by Enrique Eder: “…K-12 and university curriculums can be built by communities of teachers from around the world, and accessed by students to learn and be tested.” He goes on to explain that entire lessons or tests, or individual text, video or test questions would be copyable from one curriculum to another.

This is interesting because of the growing use of Moodle, an open source course management system (Moodle is an acronym for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment and a good summary of what it is is on The University of Manchester’s site). UCLA has announced that it would start using Moodle and the OU has started what is reported to be the world’s largest rollout of Moodle. Moodle contains functionality that allows the creation of course materials including lessons and tests as well as wiki functionality.

Moodle also makes it easy to do just what Enrique suggests; course modules can be copied from one installation to another (including to local ones, on a student’s computer, for example). As initiatives such as the e-Learning Foundation, a UK-based charity that aims to put computers into the homes of disadvantaged children, take off, more and more children will have the capability to use systems such as Moodle both in the classroom and at home. This leads to the opportunity to deliver non-goverment mandated material easily directly to children.

There are existing initiatives to create curriculae online, such as for South Africa on Wikibooks (Wikibooks is part of the Wikimedia Foundation, a charitable organisation that also includes Wikipedia) and for K-12 textbooks in California. Wikibooks has also created text books, but seems to be struggling to maintain momentum with the Wikijunior project having as few as 11 people voting to decide on what book becomes the project for the quarter.

Nevertheless, our contributors seem to think that The Economist’s clout could create the momentum needed to make the promise of some of these projects become reality.

So, maybe we can win someting with kids….

(In addition to those mentioned in this post, thank you to all those who have contributed suggestions related to education or a younger audience for The Economist.)

The third in a series on the ideas we received

Undoubtedly one of the key challenges in today’s world is managing the ever growing information tsunami. Accessing and creating huge quantities of information is easy, but sorting the wheat from the chaff is the problem. A significant number of responses from our idea collection drive challenged The Economist to present a solution.

Enthusiastic readers of The Economist often hail the publication as their primary trusted source of global news and analysis. While they may read traditional newspapers daily, either in print or online, their weekly issue of The Economist provides the aggregation of the most important issues of that week plus analysis and opinion. In our idea collection, many contributors suggested expanding The Economist’s service of “trusted advisor and overseer” and applying it to information available online.

There was strong support among idea contributors for The Economist to become the “gateway” or “sorter” of a wider body of information beyond that purely generated by itself. Colin Henderson wrote: “I trust the Economist, I trust the content, I trust their analysis and their predictions. But I get all the rest of the information from the internet sorted through Google…..I need a trusted source…that assimilates all the news and information, assesses it, within my personal context and presents it to me.”

Many internet users are already taking advantage of using and “readers” (such as ) to streamline their online information intake, but this is often based on the user having previously visited a site and having chosen to receive the information feeds from it. Colin’s proposal suggests The Economist becomes the user’s primary respected source which also trawls the internet on the user’s behalf delivering content it feels is most appropriate based on The Economist’s assessment of value, reliability and news-worthiness.

“It learns from me as I read”, Collin adds. This type of benefit can, to some extent, be achieved with community feedback, as suggested by Earl Killian. With the ability to rate articles and add comments before sharing one’s reading with one’s friends, you build a communal system of receiving information which is most likely to meet your fields of interest. and currently allow this type of interaction with their “tagging” and “posting to friends” functionality. In one of our brainstroming sessions we also came up with the thought of somehow collecting data of our subscribers’ surfing behaviour to compile lists, such as “The Economist’s reader’s favorite websites” and “what other readers of this article have read”. Sites like and Last.fm - go some way to carrying out this type of action.

Iain Wicking was on the same train of thought with his proposal suggesting readers could set up specific preferences of their interests, to guide the delivery of preferred information. As Iain notes, “the issue is not the quantity of information but the difficulty of finding, making use of and sharing relevant information”.

An Economist Intelligence Unit colleague suggested exploring the application of tools which show the interrelationships between concepts, as a possible solution. Such services can ease information overload or highlight information clusters. Dann Anthony Maurno suggested a point’n'click globe: Economist data and analysis overlaid on allowing the reader to scan the globe and zero in on a location of interest to access the relevant country and regional data. Reuters have a Beta version of a map that does something similar (see below). Alternatively, one could move the mouse over a timeline which tells you about major events by time and a keyword.

Such developments look like they could be implemented by primarily using new and developing technology, but another contributor, Jing (who doesn’t want us to publish the surname), points out that “people still like an editorial staff to screen for quality and relevance”. Its this kind of thinking that suggests to me that the traditional role of publisher could move from their managing their own-produced content to managing a “standard”. Jing’s idea was more specifically related to consolidating and summarising the blogosphere, but the principle could be applied to other online content: that a respected source like The Economist could present for its readers the dominant viewpoints, showcase the various views for debate and even link to wider related event coverage, including multi-lingual reporting.

Shannon Bauman is supportive of a similar concept of multi-level news access, further proposing this to be available as a mobile, audio version allowing one to delve deeper, or skip and skim the various articles as suits one’s requirements.

The Economist and other publishers of much loved media are in the very fortunate position that they already provide their readership a service for which they are often well regarded and respected. Rather than sounding the death knell of such media, the internet may, by its own complicated nature, provide the new direction by which such media can flourish in the future: as the font of all knowledge, in your chosen publisher’s colour.

(In addition to those mentioned in this post, thank you to all those who have contributed suggestions relating to managing information.)

The second in a series on the ideas we received

While many of the ideas we have received have been similar, there have been many unique ones, or ones that are about The Economist itself and some of its ‘products’.

(Disclosure: the ideas mentioned in the next two paragraphs were submitted by Economist Group colleagues David Shirreff and Edward Lucas.)

David felt that it would be a good idea to put The Economist’s Style Guide online (in its entirety, as you’ll find that there is already a large amount of useful information on the web site) so that readers could ’suggest updates and log mistakes that they see in The Economist’. David feels that an online guide would help The Economist ‘achieve that perfection of style and content for which we strive’. I can see the Style Guide becoming a wiki online, where users can change and update the guide. David notes that as ‘the English language is constantly evolving, the Style Book would become a living arbiter of what is good, elegant, pleasing English’.

Edward takes this idea a step further by suggesting that we run an online prose clinic. Again, this idea would work well as a wiki and perhaps freelance or retired journalists could be paid for significant contributions to the work.

Other users have also commented on how we can expand on some of our existing features. One user feels that we should elaborate on our Big Mac index to include ‘the price of ingredients, labo r costs, expense of complying with health regulations, and shipping expenses’. He references the ‘Great Tomato Shortage of 2005′ when several hurricanes (including Wilma) hit tomato crops in the US and affected the price of tomatoes - causing some fast food chains to remove the fruit from their burgers or charge extra for them. This user suggests that The Economist could ‘analyze how weather affects food prices’ and then ask fast food eaters if ‘the price changes caused them to adjust their eating habits or alter their restaurant preferences’. (Yes, I realise a Big Mac has ). The user then suggests that The Economist could then cover labour conditions, and sanitary regulations to get a wider picture of the influence of the Big Mac.

Bradley Skaggs’ idea submission was also along the line of developing an existing product at The Economist. Except he’s talking about The Economist, itself, and having it translated into different languages. Brad does not suggest a word-by-word translation of each issue into a foreign language but suggests that articles can be translated wiki-style, with the most relevant (or highly debatable) articles being translated first (Brad points to a recent article about property law in China). Having moved to London from Beijing, I like this idea and its related implications (some of which Kirk MacDonald mentioned in his submission). Much like the elaboration on the Big Mac index, a wiki-style translation of articles from The Economist would also open the doors to further discussion on related issues (like this English-language debate on the opposition to the property law).

We close the idea submission process and form on Sunday evening 6pm GMT. So if you have a flash of genius that you don’t mind someone else taking to market then let us know. If you have a flash of genius that you want to take to market then good luck. It’s tough. If you’re starting on your own read this otherwise read the brief and submit your idea.

The first in a series on the ideas we received

Wikis. Blogs. Social networks. When we started gathering ideas two weeks ago, I expected we would get a lot of submissions related to the concept of user-generated content (and we did, as the tag cloud next to our idea submission form shows – a subject for a future post). Yet there were also a dozen entries in an area where I did not think we would receive much input: prediction, information or decision markets.

For those not familiar with the concept: these are speculative markets set up to make predictions on the outcome of a particular event. The most popular example is the US presidential election. People can bet on one candidate by buying a “contract”, essentially a promise of the seller to pay, say, a dollar if the candidate wins and nothing if he or she loses.

Those certain of the candidate’s victory should be willing to pay up to a dollar for this contract (they’ll pocket one dollar minus the price they paid). Those confident of a loss should want to sell such a contract, expecting to be able to keep the money they got for it (and not having to pay the one dollar to the buyer). Given enough buyers and sellers, this market should establish a price for the contract – which represents the probability of the candidate’s victory.

© Iowa Electronic Market

Although this may sound somewhat complicated, such markets have been around for over a decade – and have rather a good track record. The Iowa Electronic Market, for instance, which was launched in the late 1980s, predicted a narrow win for George Bush in 2004 (see chart above). Wikipedia lists some 30 websites offering prediction markets in one form or another. Their main differentiator is whether they use real cash (Intrade, HedgeStreet and WeatherBill) or play money (Foresight Exchange, inkling markets and NewsFutures). Whatever the currency, most predict a democrat to end up in the White House in 2008. Here is a chart of the relevant market on NewsFutures (the figure to the right is the current probability of a democrat winning):

© NewsFutures

Most contributors in this area would like The Economist to launch an online service allowing subscribers to participate and even create such prediction markets. “The Economist has a perfect userbase for running policy analysis markets. Every article should have a sidebar with the relevant market(s) displayed”, suggests Mike Linksvayer. And Scott Harper writes: “Implement online decision markets for Economist subscribers. Open at least one every month with a 12-24 month maturity. Each will relate to a featured article and let subscribers compete with peers in a running points total.”

Some added a special twist to the concept. Rafe Furst wants us to develop a system for “truth claim markets”, which amounts to using markets not to predict future outcomes, but to evaluate current truths – a tall order. Nathan Miller proposes “an index for worldwide memes, ideas, and trends that rates their popularity and value much like a stock index”. And Randall Burns suggests using prediction markets to identify individuals with good prediction skills and tap them as a resource for The Economist.

Perhaps the most intriguing ideas are those suggesting The Economist should create its own private currency, which subscribers could use to make bets on prediction or other markets. Simon Stuart, for instance, suggests that every Economist subscriber receive one thousand Economist dollars per year to trade. This triggered another thought within the Red Stripe Team: Why not let subscribers earn some money (by contributing to a wiki, for instance) and spend it (by donating it to a charity of their choice)? Now there’s an idea: turning the Economist into a real economy.

(In addition to those mentioned in this post, we would like to thank all those who have contributed suggestions related to prediction markets.)

“What can be so difficult about sending out a few e-mails?” Ludwig asks. And it is a fair enough question when one can so easily fire off personal e-mails from one’s own personal computer. But whether one likes it or not, to do anything on a commercial scale is usually much more complex. And it is these sorts of “complications” that start-ups, like our own project, need to appreciate when translating an idea to reality.

And so quite a few things had to be considered before we could send out, this week, e-mails to a few thousand of Economist Group clients from various business units as part of our ongoing search for ideas:

• Clients’ privacy preferences must be respected - a legal requirement. In selecting the e-mail addresses, only clients who had agreed to receiving correspondence from other Economist Group businesses could be contacted.

• An e-mail campaign must include a mechanism for receipt and management of any requests to “unsubscribe” from future e-mail campaigns. Where such a mechanism does not exist one has to be established, and maintained.

• Arranging mailings to “hit” at key times ensures a more successful response rate, and as a result timed e-mail drops need to be established to match different time zones. To send all e-mails out to hit during European business hours would mean all Asian e-mails would arrive at night.

• A standard personal computer system is not powerful enough to send out large quantities of e-mail. They need to be run through larger technical systems, which makes it necessary to source such a system or liaise with others who have access to one.

And then there are umpteen smaller things to consider, such as deciding to send an html or text version of the email, the right timing and, of course, what the most effective copy will be for each target group.

In the past two weeks, I often have found myself explaining to my Project Red Stripe colleagues that any “hold ups” or complications with “sending out an innocent email” to clients is not our old colleagues trying to plot against us and be difficult, but rather “the way business is done”.

There are good and fair reasons underlying most things, but the legalities and technicalities invariably frustrate impatient trail blazers, like ourselves. We can’t change everything to suit our needs. Rather, we need to learn how to make the system work for us.

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.

We are busy reviewing two hundred-plus ideas from the ether. Whilst we are still deciding which ones to develop further, here’s a selection from those that we probably won’t.

“Here’s to alcohol: the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems.” So following on from that somebody suggested the simply divine and world peace achieving:

Free beer

That’s all it said. Just “Free beer”. Whilst I agree with the intention I only have access to The Economist Group’s content. If this actually was for Red Stripe maybe I could do something.

We have quite a few along the lines of…

Solicit free business ideas from naive contributors to build a website that makes tons of cash. Offer them a token subscription if their idea “wins”.

and

DO YOUR OWN WORK.

more…

Do you own god-damned thinking…

and more…

get a proper job

We know the problem with our terms and conditions which obviously helped us get ideas like this:

You want my idea?

How about 20% of the royalties and joint rights on any IP?

How about you getting a clue? If you don’t value my idea, you don’t GET my idea.

and the divine…

Too many MBA weenies claim ideas have no value, while their usually mistimed and misplaced misfires deserve 6 & 7 figure salaries. So the key idea is to truly value those that do, and sack the parasites that don’t. You don’t pay, you don’t play with my idea. Get used to that because I need you less than you need me and it doesn’t cost anything to keep you in the dark.

PS Independent of your little checkbox, you have no rights to use this idea in any form unless you respect it by agreeing to my terms. These are my terms and conditions and supplant your terms and conditions in all respects. Reading these words signals your agreement.

I’m not actually sure of that but by reading it I think we may not be able to revenue-share with our web-based innovating friends. It was an open question, but perhaps it’s answered now.

None of us have MBAs by the way.

Solicit free business ideas from naive contributers to build a website that makes tons of cash. Offer them a token subscription if their idea “wins”.

That’s a great idea. Thanks. I’ll see if I can get The Economist Group to do that. Erm hang on…

The team’s absolute favourite:

A universal jeans identification system.
Favorite pair of jeans been through the wash too many times?
You have the cash to replace the jeans, but where did you buy them?
What style are they?
How in the hell will you be able to buy a replacement pair?

The solution: a universal jeans identification system. Give each style of jeans from each manufacturer/company a unique ID, and then compile some sort of searchable database. Different ID numbers could be given for boot cut/straight cut, color of jeans, men’s/women’s, etc. That way I can find a replacement pair for these damn jeans that now have a hole in their pocket…

Make the database searchable online, and charge a buck or two if a consumer searching for a pair of jeans finds a match from a seller.

I can say no more.

Much of the content of the Economist is of course free-market speculation and wishful thinking. In other words, anyone reading it is not looking for information, but light entertainment.

Actual entertainment value delivered is not reliable.

In other words, it would not be a big loss if the Economist were not to be distributed and published. The Internet is good for information transfer. But if there are too many distracting sites, those sites that offer reliable and useful information suffer: they are “drowned out”.

Conclusion. Keep the economist.com domain name. Make it show a blank page. Shut down the printed version.

Predicted Benefit: Less clutter increases the value of real information.

Good night - you’ve been beautiful.