OpenInvo

OpenInvo is for people who have an idea and are willing to put the time in to flesh it out on paper, but don’t want to have to deal with actually starting a company.

For most users, the setup is pretty simple: you log into the site, agree to a fairly lengthy legal document, and then outline your ideas using diagrams and other supplementary material as necessary.

Established businesses eager for some outside inspiration can then come along and browse through OpenInvo’s directory of ideas (after paying for access, of course). At this point the tools for browsing this directory are still fairly nascent, but the company plans to build it out once it raises additional capital.

the service gauges a variety of factors, like the potential market size, how much work you’ve put into fleshing out your idea, and whether or not there’s an existing relevant patent in order to establish a fair price. But she says the range could be anywhere from $5,000 to $100,000. There’s also an option for the idea creator to collect a percentage of revenues generated by the idea, though the purchasing business would obviously have to agree to those terms.

There are a lot of IP issues involved here, and the site has been vetted by lawyers to make sure that things are up to snuff. New idea submitters have to agree to an online contract indicating that they accept OpenInvo’s terms, and companies that wish to browse the ideas have to sign a contract of their own. To help prevent abuse (for example, companies simply taking ideas without paying their creators), OpenInvo tracks each page that a business visits.

OpenInvo is still in a very early state.The service has some large companies who are eager to browse through the site’s directory, but that the service is waiting for the marketplace to fill out with more submissions before it opens the floodgates to these ‘Idea Seekers’. If those submissions don’t come then the service is obviously in trouble, so it’s doing what it can to get the word out.

In the future, OpenInvo will also flesh out its collaboration tools, and it will eventually offer real-time brainstorming sessions that businesses can use as online focus tests.