Bigger Ideas, Superbig Participation Part 2

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It’s been a hectic couple of days. Thursday, I wrote about IdeaFactory, our internal new web think tank idea collector. At the end, I teased the introduction of a new project of ours. Shortly after my post we launch it in alpha, and suffice to say, we opened the floodgates. For now, the project will be called X because I’m waiting for Paul or Rich to introduce it officially.

Everyone Loves Stats

  • Project X served 64,000 plus pageviews to 6,400 some visitors in a day and a half.
  • Project X served 44,000 unique pageviews to 4,200 unique visitors in the same period.
  • Visitors spent an average of 8 minutes on the site, viewing 10 pages.

Wow. We had massive flooding into our other properties too. On Thursday, we started to see a bump, thanks to Luke Kowalski’s internal mention, and from there, Project X kept the traffic coming.

  • IdeaFactory had 3,300 visits and 8,700 pageviews yesterday. That’s almost double the previous pageviews in only a day.
  • 43 new ideas were added in a day and a half, up to 113 total.
  • Comments more than doubled. 134 were added, bringing the total to 286.
  • Votes jumped by 145, making the total votes cast 529
  • 3,371 users logged in, compared to 132 before Project X.

This blog doubled the number of visits Friday compared to Thursday and nearly tripled the number of pageviews Friday compared to Thursday. All this was viral (a la NUTS for Jericho). We did almost no promotion.

Oh yeah, Rich built all our stuff by his lonesome in about 4 weeks aggregated, maybe less.

Takeaways
Oracle has a bunch of really smart people who wanted a place to share ideas and collaborate. I can’t tell you how many ideas popped up and got refined in comments. This is how we innovate. I’m just happy to sit back and watch.

We’re 70,000 strong. Innovation is in our DNA, believe it or not, and you’ll start to see more of this in the coming months. This year’s OpenWorld is going to rock. All this means goodness for all you customers and partners out there. Not so much for competitors.

On a related note, we are tentatively planning to have an AppsLab soiree during OpenWorld week to get to know our readers. Whether you’re attending OOW or not, stop by if you’re in the fair City of San Francisco or the Bay Area (traffic notwithstanding). Details to follow.

Thanks again to all the beautiful readers. You guys rock.

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This entry was written by Jake and posted on 4 August 2007 at 1:22 pm and filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

Viewing 7 Comments

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    Hi Jake, congratulations on getting the idea factory off to a great start.

    Lots of ideas and comments is a good indicator of creative flow. However now comes the true test of innovation - turning ideas into reality - before we can claim "Innovation is in our DNA".

    I've worked in research before, and I think its fair to say that generating ideas was never really a very hard problem to crack. We found however that we needed to most of the effort into the subsequent phases of the innovation process. How do you ensure that the best ideas get to float to the top? How do you counter the impact of conventionalism and personality to ensure that even the most unlikely ideas are given a chance to prove themselves?

    I'd suggest that this aspect of the IdeasFactory is worth a few ideas itself!

    Paul
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    Paul,
    You make a valid point that others have also made about where do the ideas go. This is one reason why I like to see idea-overlap and refinement, especially across divisions b/c it builds the consensus in advance.

    Some ideas will be rolled into what AppsLab is doing, others will find homes elsewhere. Others will fester and require that tenacity to get them done. I have a couple that have festered since before we acquired PSFT and are only now getting done. It will take willpower in some cases b/c Oracle is a big company.

    I have to disagree about "innovation in the DNA". We have it; it's out there. I think your point is that execution is not in the DNA, with which I agree.

    Thanks for reading,
    Jake
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    Hi Jake, I actually had this quote in mind regarding "innovation in the DNA" ...

    'A powerful new idea can kick around unused in a company for years, not because its merits are not recognized, but because nobody has assumed the responsibility for converting it from words into action. Ideas are useless unless used. The proof of their value is only in their implementation.' (Theodore Levitt)
    http://topten.org/public/CY/CY146.html

    i.e. its all about execution!
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    • v
    Yeah, I figured as much, and as I said, execution is not in the DNA, in that new ideas have trouble finding traction.

    Not sure I agree with the "ideas are useless" bit though entirely. What it takes sometimes is will and determination. We're hoping provide more than just an idea board. So, stay tuned and participate.
    Jake
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    I wanted to second Paul Gallagher.

    Ideas are worthless, says Paul Graham, the startup guru of sorts.

    http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html

    Here is a quick note from the article in the above link:

    "Actually, startup ideas are not million dollar ideas, and here's an experiment you can try to prove it: just try to sell one. Nothing evolves faster than markets. The fact that there's no market for startup ideas suggests there's no demand. Which means, in the narrow sense of the word, that startup ideas are worthless."

    Try selling your idea to the market/angel investors/VC's. Or in case of IdeaFactory, try selling it to the Oracle Executives. If you truly believe in it, you should rather go ahead and implement it.

    Execution is king.
    • ^
    • v
    Been fighting this battle in my own shop for some time. Coming up with the ideas is not an issue. Getting folks to look at your idea and declare it nifty is not too difficult either. The trick is getting people to care enough to give their effort and time for implementing and adopting the idea.
    • ^
    • v
    Jake,
    I work in contracts at HQ. I love this idea and would love to learn more about it. Please e-mail me. I think this can be a great tool for the contract division.
    Awesome idea.
 

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