Brad Burnham of Union Square Ventures (an investor in Bug Labs) just posted an interesting piece on their blog about the “weird economics of information”. Specifically, he’s talking about ideas and how entrepreneurs who share their concepts and plans with others tend to fair better than those that don’t (based on his 15 yr experience as a VC).

I believe that ideas, like genes, have certain inherent characteristics that, when sent out into the world, help determine their chances of success. No idea exists in a vacuum. Ideas are social. The worst punishment for any idea, just like a human, is solitary confinement. Every seed needs a garden. The real trick is trying to figure out, ahead of time, and in a systematic way, which memes will be successful. As Brad suggests, the best way I know how to do that is to take raw ideas out into the open and see how they fare. It can be scary but I’m always emboldened by Marshall McLuhan’s famous quote – “Only puny secrets need protection. Big discoveries are protected by public incredulity.”

Is there a Grand Unification Theory of ideas and their behavior? Unlikely. But that shouldn’t stop us from thinking hard about ways to better understand them. Richard Dawkins’ book “The Selfish Gene”, which introduced me to the concept of memetics, presents some interesting arguments. But it’s no where near the final word on the topic.

Posted in Uncategorized by Peter Semmelhack | on Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008 at 8:52 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.