email:

faq

What is brainstorm exchange?
Who is brainstorm exchange for?
Why use brainstorm exchange?
What do I get for my ideas?
How much does it cost?

What is brainstorm exchange?

Brainstorm exchange works by bringing together people who have ideas with people and companies that need ideas. Contributors of ideas may be rewarded for their efforts from sponsors of brainstorms. Contributors who submit great ideas that the sponsor can use, may be in line to receive cash, discounts or merchandise from the sponsor of the brainstorm. Brainstorm exchange is a place where people pose challenges and others respond with ideas built around those challenges. They can also build upon previously posted ideas and make them different and maybe better.

Who is brainstorm exchange for?

Companies, organizations, classes, individuals and students all use brainstorm exchange as a way to generate thought and collect ideas from a wider communinity. More ideas are better than fewer ideas, and the more places that you can get ideas also leads to a better diversity of ideas.

Why use brainstorm exchange?

We started brainstorm exchange to allow smaller companies, non-profits and even individuals to tap into innovation from all sources, for free. This includes customers, suppliers, employees, and others with an interest and a stake in the success of an organization.

Many large companies such as Legos and Starbucks are able to deploy resources to attempt to tap into and monetize customer innovations and customer demands for innovation. Smaller companies by their nature should be closely integrated with their customer wants and demands, but often times are focused on other things - there are only so many hours in the day.

So we are trying to help companies to tap into ideas generated by their customers - don't these ideas have value, and shouldn't the customer be entitled to remuneration for that value? Intellectual property has value - enormous value in some cases. However, many ideas have no to limited commercial value as a stand alone. Many products and categories of products could be made better and easier to use through the efforts of a community. I am not referring to radical changes, just maybe "put the button on the other side" or "make the interface easier to use by doing this" type ideas. Individually, not so valuable - taken as a whole, modified and refined by internal R&D, incredibly valuable.

Also, we don't try to make everyone post their ideas in an open forum. Subscribers may start invitation only brainstorms, often times limited to those currently employed by the company that started the brainstorm, as a great way to initiate, build-upon and subject to an extended review ideas that were generated internally. Sort of like a brainstorming session over the course of a month, but with a built-in institutional memory, and an ability to track and chart a path forward on promising fronts.

What do I get for my ideas?

Contributors of ideas may be rewarded for their efforts by sponsors of brainstorms. Contributors who submit great ideas that the sponsor can use, may receive cash, discounts or merchandise from the sponsor of the brainstorm.

However, most contributors will only receive the satisfaction of having helped to make a decent product or service better. The better we can make all products and services, the better all of our lives are going to be. If no one steps up and says this would help me to interact and enhance the value of this product to me, then we will all be stuck with products that, well, suck. It would be better to live in a world where most products not only don't suck, but actually contribute to making our lives just that much better.

How much does it cost?

To contribute to a brainstorm is free. Open brainstorms are free. They do carry banner ads, but these can be removed for a license fee of $14.95 per brainstorm per month. Invitational brainstorms have a license fee of $14.95 per brainstorm per month. Addional functionality comes with a paid license for either open or invitational brainstorms: you may include sponsor created tools, links and images with the brainstorm; you may designate internal reviewers, and; you may set-up an internal review and evaluation process of submitted ideas including 10 custom areas, internal reviewer comments and recommendations for a path forward. To put that in some perspective, you get ideas from, a global resource, for a year, for the cost of a set of 1000 three color thermoset business cards or an hour's worth of legal consulting.

If you can not find the answer to your question here please contact us.