I’ve come up with several ways to turn “the ideas book” into a viable business.
The basic concept is that people can put their ideas up for sale, and that businesses get on board so that they can tap into these ideas and keep ahead of the curve. People would put their ideas up because essentially someone can buy the idea (it would be a upfront payment component as well as a percentage of profits derived).
The ideas book can profit in several ways. It can take a cut of each idea bought and each percentage of profits. But it can also sell different levels of subscriptions to businesses. Essentially an idea bubbles up the levels, so that the platinum subscribers see the ideas first, after it’s been delayed a week it becomes available to the gold subscribers etc until it hits the public level. By this stage, no big business has picked up the idea and it’s available for anyone in the general public to pick up and use (they still have to pay for it though!).
Importantly, when an idea is bought, it goes “off the market” which opens up an interesting possibility. If a business sees an idea which could conflict or beat a product which is coming out soon, they may choose to buy it and shelve it just so that it never sees the light of day.
You could maybe tie in a moderation scheme so that only the best ideas make it to the level where they bubble up through the tiers. Because you’d have a lot of people supplying the same idea.