That is a really unpopular thing to say these days.

What I am finding is that there are lots of businesses out there making good money out of everyone else's collaboration.

There are many free contributions I make in forums and community groups and so on. To sustain myself in doing those things I need some money. If I make a valuable contribution I deserve some return.

Looking at ideas4all.com for example, users give away ideas. It is possible that some users may be recognised and people contract them financially to develop ideas.

To sustain any focussed group as a creative team I think it would be right that they consider how to make money out of what they do.

So, how could the creative team earn its members a quid?

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Privacy and trust. ie why not make this particular group private - only existing members can join and then we can discuss our various business ideas. Share based on contribution.
A like-minded mind.

As I have time, I'll throw in my interest regarding making money from 'brilliance' - mine/ours/others - onto this thread, and see if it might go anywhere worthwhile enough to me.
A quick two hat sequence:

1000 member target
Possible money sources - grant or trust (Bill Gates?) - clients - varying levels : freebies, small costs up to big costs - donations
Specialised web application to support this - does anything exist
Some functions
- Clients Request a task
- monitor progress
- accept reports
Team members
- Join tasks
- Lead tasks
- collaborate
- thinking tool editors
- produce reports
Admin
- resource allocation
- funds assignment

Po Be own client
- Internal implementation component - point of difference = "operacy" capability to move ideas forward.
-- Operacy teams as special task group after ideas generated?
Team members
- minimum input per month for salary and/or commission for tasks
- Rating - volunteer freebie only member (not vetted as much), regular member, senior thinker, team leader
Free tasks - high profile contributions to the world - minor tasks to keep a cloud of thinking and doing going on at all times.
I see two structural areas - 1) The task gathering end and 2) the team operations end
1) Task gathering gets people to define what creativity they need. A decision can be made as to whether there is a fee to charge or not, and whether the team members working on it will get paid or not.

2) Team members should go to town on the unpaid work. From the most competent of those we then draw the team that can be assigned paying tasks.
Danny said: Task gathering gets people to define what creativity they need. A decision can be made as to whether there is a fee to charge or not, and whether the team members working on it will get paid or not.

It sounds like you're going in another direction to what your 1st post suggested, Danny. Ie. Your comment: What I am finding is that there are lots of businesses out there making good money out of everyone else's collaboration.
Are you thinking of a 'creative consulting' direction? Only? &/or .............?

Danny said: 2) Team members should go to town on the unpaid work.

You're losing me a bit here. What unpaid work exactly?
As a group we will get lots of requests. Some trivial and some large requiring considerable effort. There are some things we might charge for, some things we might make money out of working on, at times we may create intellectual property for the team, and some things we just use for the exercise.

The ones done just for the exercise give us an opportunity to demonstrate our current level of competence. This might be used by others to determine who they want in teams that are going for dollars on some project.

I have no specific idea of how this will all work, who will coordinate, how money will be brought in, or distributed. That thinking has yet to be done.
Danny said: I have no specific idea of how this will all work, who will coordinate, how money will be brought in, or distributed. That thinking has yet to be done.

Maybe there's a successful formula or 2 out there that's already being used? Anyone know of one or more?
The Think Tank model has existed for a while. It reflects the "paid to deal with this issue" part of the project but is missing the free for all aspect.
Not quite sure what you're meaning by "free for all". Is that as in 'give it away'?

One thought that comes to mind for me as to what could be incorporated into our thinking is a site I believe I've posted here some time ago. It was a marketing site where I was 'testing' my thoughts/knowledge especially regarding the creating and developing of marketing tactics/strategies for real life situations:

http://www.marketingprofs.com/ea/

The way it operates is that a newcomer with marketing questions is given a certain # of free points. Marketing question(s) can then be asked using some to all of those points as incentives to people responding. The person asking the question can award all the points to one respondent, or can award a portion of them to a # of respondents. After they've used their free points up, then they have to start buying them to ask more questions

You can also get more points by offering accepted answers to marketing questions, and getting points awarded to you for them.
Free for all - generating ideas by anyone interested for requests that are deemed "not chargeable".
Danny said: Free for all - generating ideas by anyone interested for requests that are deemed "not chargeable".

Thought that's what you probably meant, but wanted to make sure "Free for all" wasn't meant to mean something like 'brawling'. :)

Okay, so tying your previous comment of "The Think Tank model has existed for a while. It reflects the "paid to deal with this issue" part of the project but is missing the free for all aspect." into this last comment: For marketing/market positioning purposes, maybe a tagline could read something like 'The ....... Group - A different kind of think tank'

Just a thought. Not saying 'think tank' is the way I'd go personally, if it was just me involved.
Created a new discussion to follow up on the naming of this team: What's in a name?

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