Woowar

1 - "and IBM will be keeping track of this to see what the real people want"

How do you reach that conclusion?

2 - Nathan - perhaps you would rather I write "but don't bother using it because IBM won't pay any attention anyway"? I reach that conclusion because this is a new way for a collective voice to reach IBM, and they will hear it.

What I didn't say is "and IBM will be making implementing your ideas" because we all know that's wishful thinking.

All we can do, and I believe the ideajam is a good way of doing it, is give to the product managers and execs at IBM more quality clear information to work with. If IdeaJam sticks (jam is sticky, after all ) then probably somewhere down the line, it will make a real difference to the product - but what, and when, who knows.

3 - A timely post Julian, I just posted a short feature article about research into idea generation and how cognitive science has stifled research by suggesting that ideas come from within the human mind rather than the interaction between mind and the outside world...

Read on in <a href="{ Link } Innovation</a>

db

4 - Julian, as your reply was 4 days after mine, I hadn't realized you'd responded.

Of course I wouldn't like you to say "don't bother." But at the time you wrote this, no one outside IBM had any way of knowing what IBM's interaction with the site would be.

Frankly, we STILL don't know. We know that Alan Lepofsky has posted some ideas and voted on others -- and that's valuable. But have you seen anyone from IBM in an official capacity say "this is a good idea and will be submitted to product management?" Absolutely not.

5 - Nathan - apologies for the tardy response: still a bit of a novice blogger really, so checking for comments is not as much part of my routine (yet) as it should be.

You are, of course, right - we don't really know how much difference ideajam will make. But my money is definitely on it making a difference of some sort.

Actually I rather hope we don't get the "this is a good idea and will be submitted to product management" posts from IBM, because that would imply that anything that doesn't have a response of that sort is NOT a good idea, even it's had a gazillion votes from the community.