The Idea Economy

Welcome to our on-line "think tank." Here we will share new ideas and discussions of topics found in our upcoming version of The Idea Economy. We look forward to your ideas and input. Below we've published the new Introduction in its entirety.

Idea Economy Introduction

If you get it, you really get it!

This introduction is longer than I originally intended it to be, because if you read it and “get it” you really get it. Then the rest of the book is interesting, stimulating, maybe shocking and certainly helpful. You should read it, but not before you start to “get it.”

The “new economy” is the Idea Economy.” It is not the “information economy,” the “knowledge economy,” the “experience economy,” the “technology economy,” or the “digital economy.” The service economy is going…going…soon to be gone like its predecessors the manufacturing/industrial economy and the agricultural economy.

The Idea Economy is no more the “information economy” or “technology economy” than the manufacturing economy was the electricity economy or the agricultural economy was the water or soil economy.

Ideas are not information any more than a note is a symphony, paint is a painting, or a thread is a quilt. Ideas are the new products created in the manufacturing plant of the human mind.

The primary product of the Idea Economy is ideas. You and I can and must produce ideas just as those who prospered in previous economies had to produce crops, manufactured goods, and most recently, services.


You Must Manufacturer Ideas or Languish in the Service Economy

Why should it surprise us that there is such a thing as the Idea Economy? I suppose the farmers might have been surprised at the advent of the manufacturing economy, as were the factory workers with the arrival of a service economy. As with all major economic shifts there is good and bad. We produce more crops today than ever before, but it requires only two percent of our work force verses ninety percent during the agricultural economy. Good for crop eaters, bad for crop producers unprepared for the move to industrialization.

Today we manufacturer more goods of higher quality than we did during the manufacturing economy. Good for consumers. Bad for those factory workers and unsuspecting manufacturers squeezed between the shift from manufacturing to service. So the shift will squeeze and hurt again for the complacent service workers today. Where are you? Where is your company? Are you aware of the change upon us and what it means?

At its core this book is about you and only you. In the Idea Economy you will negotiate and navigate your way amid the world market place of ideas. Your knowledge, experience, insight, and creativity must converge to produce ideas. This will become your occupation whether you work for a company or work for yourself. Most ideas will be economically viable.

Thus, either ideas have value or they do not. If ideas have value there must be a market for them. The marketplace for ideas has, in previous economies, been predominantly inefficient—allowing and providing access and opportunity for very few. In fact, it’s probable that the best ideas have remained and still remain locked inside people.

Technology will provide an efficient idea marketplace for the first time in history. Ideas have always pushed along a natural economic continuum toward expression and efficiency, like spawning salmon fighting their way up the stream of friction. Most people have good ideas but few have had opportunity to introduce them into a marketplace. After all is said, the Idea Economy is the age of hope and personal empowerment. Everyone, everywhere not only has unprecedented opportunity to market ideas, we must learn to “ideate” or we will be left behind, buried relics of old economies.


Selling Ideas? Preposterous!

Just as paint can form infinite works of beauty and value so can information be fashioned into an infinite number of valuable economic ideas. Not all ideas are economic ideas. This book deals mostly with economic ideas—ideas that can be bought and sold as commodities.

You will offer your ideas to the world market place in some instances immediately. You will have many ideas in process—incubating and collaborating will be a daily occupation. You will share, think, search, and create with other ideators—thinkers all over the world. Ideas will take shape and you with others will buy and sell these personal creations like you might purchase groceries, furniture, or an automobile. Everyone has ideas by virtue of their life experiences.

In the Idea Economy everyone, for the first time in history will be fairly rewarded for their ideas whether you work for yourself of a company. As an employee you cannot control the value of your stock options but you can control the value of your ideas. If the company will not reward you fairly for your ideas the market place will.


New Perspective--The Playing Field is Flat and Compressed

Picture the world of six billion human beings separated by oceans, mountains, language, culture, and all other natural and human made barriers. Now, imagine that instantaneously the entire world is flattened into one immense plain upon which all humankind is standing, with no barriers between us. Finally, imagine that in the same instant the plain is flattened it is also compressed, drawn together such that every human being is, in some morphic, magical way, brought face to face with every other human being in real time. If you can create and hold this image in your mind you will begin to understand the most important message of this book. Understanding this central principle of flattening and compression will forever change the way you think and perceive the world—it is the Idea Economy.

Advancing information technology creates a complete flattening and compressing effect. Just as in the past economies of agriculture, manufacture, and service, advances in technology initiated transition into and out of each economy. The transition from the current service economy into the new Idea Economy however will continue to be almost incomprehensible. Its affects will be devastating and wonderful.

As important as the ideas you create is the stark reality that on the new flat and compressed plain, you are your own company, brand, and product which you must merchandise and market every day in the same virtual world market. You stand face to face with every other human and compete with your mind. No one will hide behind a name, network, title, or any historical, traditional barriers. Glass ceilings, “good ‘ol boys clubs,” and impressive degrees mean little or nothing any longer. The Idea Economy is an intellectual wrestling “free for all” taking place in a ring in which you advance solely by your ability to monetize personal experience, knowledge, insight, and creativity. This new model separates Ideators and Ideaprenuers from Idea Illiterates.

Information is on course for ubiquity. Once information is ubiquitous (and it already is in some market segments) it ceases as a scarce resource and thus becomes free or almost free. The question then is “what resources are scarce in an Idea Economy that are obsolete in the Service Economy?” The answer begins as a simple one; “Ultimately, the only things of value will be the products that cannot be produced efficiently and effectively by a machine (or information processor.)” Creativity is the only process and ideas are the only products immune to the displacing affects of information technology and therefore represent the process and products of greatest value.

Creativity is the last frontier for science to define. New measures frighten many economists. Never the less, the fact remains; current, traditional economic measures are inadequate at best and obsolete at worst. As ideas become the most scarce commodity they will therefore become the most valuable. This book discusses a philosophical architecture of the new economy, some of the many effects, and finally some solutions for consideration by individuals and businesses.


The Walls are Down
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In 1995 the first edition of The Idea Economy was published. Between 1994 and 1996 I spoke to more than 100 groups about the Idea Economy. I had constructed a large Styrofoam wall, some ten feet high and fifteen feet long, which when ever feasible, was placed on the stage to my left. Near the beginning of my remarks I would walk over to the wall and with a mighty stroke or two combined with a kick or two I would knock the wall down. Some, or perhaps just me, observed this ritual impressed by the drama of the tumbling wall. I would continue by telling them that if they remembered nothing else about my remarks I now felt confident they would remember this moment.

The Berlin Wall had just come down. I told audiences that the wall’s demise represented much more than freedom for the East German people. The Berlin Wall symbolized the birth of a new economy in which information was ubiquitous and would become the raw material for the factory of the mind. Ideas were thus destined to become the new currency. Information could not be kept from the minds of the East German people. In time, the information was processed in German minds and was embodied in the idea of freedom. Some thirty countries have followed East Germany defying limitations and toppling age-old barriers created by humans and nature.

Information technology has flattened and compressed our communications and with it all barriers, real and perceived, have come down. This is a frightening and exciting proposition—the foundation of a new economy.

In the Idea Economy the average income for maids and carpenters will exceed that of most attorneys. Java programmers will earn more than most doctors. At least half of the Fortune 500 companies will be displaced, acquired, sold, or fail. Companies less than ten years old will acquire or defeat companies ten times their senior. Entire professions such as realtors, travel agents, insurance agents, and stock brokers will be eliminated (this includes the on-line version). Public education will be privatized. We will see the end of multi level marketing. Most public schools might close down. We will economize and optimize our language. Government will go head to head in opposition to Ideaprenuers and will loose. Organizations that are hierarchical, authority based, protect and dictate information, and utilize guilt and fear in governance will crumble. Indeed, we are on course for sweeping changes of unconsidered proportions.

Principles explained in this book make such predictions quite obvious. Yet sadly, for most these events cause fear and confusion.

Culture and society has long worked counter productively to creativity. Rather than teach and espouse the ideation process society and most organizations have promoted and rewarded conformity. We are taught in school to absorb, store, and recall. Except in rare instance creativity has been discouraged and certainly seldom rewarded.

We have been taught to think linearly. Creativity is non-linear by nature. There have been no classes on imagination, inspiration, ingenuity and initiative. In essence we have been taught and trained to be mostly computers—information processors. No surprise then that for most people the newest competitor is the inactivity of our own mind and the limitations we have allowed to shackle our creative faculties. The cotton gin replaced workers, the steam engine more, robotics still more. Your ability to create economic ideas and collaborate with others in the same process is your new occupation entirely or at least in part.

When is the last time you created, developed, and sold an “idea? I’m not talking about just a “product” or a “business.” I mean when is the last time you can document coming up with an idea and receiving monetary and/or emotional reward directly associated with your idea?

One of the most profound attributes of the Idea Economy is the destruction of traditional barriers, the leveling of the economic playing field and introduction of true parity. His announcement was as anticlimactic as declaring to a farmer that the good news of industrialization meant that he would now give away his crops in hope of creating more demand for the same, then working more hours or charging more for his crops. This misses the point entirely. The opportunity was for the farmer to leverage new technology into the next economy—produce more, work less, or not at all.

It is my most sincere desire and hope that you will embrace the Idea Economy not just as another economic shift; but, as the next evolution of human kind. It provides the opportunity for each of us to wake up every day to a multitude of canvas’ awaiting artists. We are each an artist. This liberation will be difficult and intimidating at first. We will explore new values as we share our most vunerable creations—our ideas. In this process we will discover ourselves, the good and beauty in others, and shape and improve the world daily. We will come to expect and cherish change. This transition will be like falling asleep in church and waking up in a nudist colony. For most, it will be like falling asleep in….East Berlin and waking up in Disneyland. Either way, together we will paint the future.