Some business people seem to believe that Ethics is the name of one of the UK Home Counties, but ethical trading practices are crucial when exploiting innovation for profit, says Maxine Horn of Creative Barcode.
The other day I donated some spare change to a young person claiming to be homeless. He was asking for money from anyone walking by, it was raining and he was soaked, so I handed him some cash. Did I feel good about it? Not really. It made me wonder whether he was simply taking advantage of others' good nature - particularly as I had seen him at a cash point earlier, mobile phone in hand. He might even earn more than I do.
However, the incident did get me thinking about the ethical decisions people make in their personal and business lives, and how such decisions can impact upon others.
From there it was but a short hop to considering how ethical decision-making is never more pertinent than when applied to those who bend the idea-generating skills of professional originators to their own commercial advantage when knowingly using others commercial concepts, ideas and propositions without permission or recompense. Is that ethical? Is it any better than taking another person's money under false pretences?
It feels odd that business "professionals" who do not possess a natural aptitude for ideation find it hard to embrace those that do, preferring instead to present others' innovative ideas as their own.
Why do they do that? Well, the simple answer is "because they can." Few, if any, formal rules exist to say that they can't. Perpetrators of idea misappropriation are rarely held accountable by the person whose work they have taken advantage of, often because it is hard to prove and more often as it is an undignified and expensive pursuit. No rules, other than personal ethics, are in place to seek recourse for misappropriation. To misquote Jimmy Carter, ninety per cent of people have to live by the rules because ten per cent of people do not live by values.
But it needn't to be this way. If the world of commerce celebrated the status of idea originators whose knowledge, know-how and skills add value to their brands, much more progress and profit would be achieved by both parties. Conversely, if the business world unethically purloins commercial concepts and undermines those whose brainchild they are, the implementation of the idea invariably suffers dilution and falls short of its potential.
So why isn't the commercial expertise of expert originators - industrial designers, design consultants, inventors, scientists, technologists, design engineers and other innovation professionals - much more widely recognised, nurtured and celebrated, and why doesn't ethical best practice form the very fabric of our business culture?
Open Innovation is not truly open - it is merely ajar
Many corporations engage in Open Innovation by encouraging the submission of ideas originating from outside their own companies. Yet they will either only view patent-protected ideas or hold non-confidential meetings. In a global marketplace where an estimated 70% of all incremental and ground-breaking innovation is not subject to patent protection, how can they possibly hope to exploit innovation properly?
And of those ideas that are, or could become, subject to patent protection, most will be worth significantly less - or prove worthless - if developed without consulting route-to-market partners and agreeing co-creation deals. Concepts that require significant retrospective tailoring and re-engineering can render their patents worthless.
The current assertion that "ideas" are free - with no value, and at the mercy of all until they have been commercialised - devalues professionals in the creative industries: their talents, education, years of in-practice experience, and their knowledge and know-how.
Such a stance places an almost insurmountable barrier to participation from arguably the most innovative and qualified group in the whole innovation process. And all that is needed to remove those barriers to the benefit of everyone is open protection and ethical, trust & permission-based trading.
Similarly, the reliance on the "public domain" argument as an excuse for idea misappropriation simply cannot continue. The public domain has been unofficially stretched to include one-to-one meetings between originators and potential route-to-market partners - in other words, confidential business meetings and negotiations. Yet in contradiction, duty of confidentiality features in the majority of brand owners Corporate Social Responsibility policies.
The public domain is exactly what it says it is - "public" - and includes media exposure, exhibitions, conferences and seminars; social networking sites and other public platforms. To assert that this applies to one-to-one business discussions is a stretch too far.
If an open innovation society is to properly exist (and I believe it must, and soon), then business trading models between professional originators, businesses and investors simply have to change. Because at present open innovation is not truly open, it is merely ajar.
Is this the road to Ethics?
Generally speaking, individuals and firms in the creative industries do not wish to launch new companies or competitive brands; they simply wish to co-create new products and processes with route-to-market partners and be commercially rewarded on ethical, equitable terms for their knowledge based ideas and experience based know-how.
And this is where open protection comes into play. Creative Barcode dismantles the barriers so that the door to open innovation swings fully open.
To be clear, Creative Barcode itself is an innovative idea. It is a unique use of technology for protecting creative business concepts. It embeds digital codes denoting ownership and permission-based usage into concepts, proposals and creative works, and is a new, simple and effective form of intellectual property protection, whilst opening up ideas trading not restricting it.
Used by creative individuals, innovative companies and professional originators who wish to present, sell or licence their applied knowledge to third parties, Creative Barcode provides "proof of ownership" protection at the pre-commercialisation stage - when making pitches, sharing ideas and know-how, or submitting proposals and tenders. Crucially, it also supports best practice in ethical trading and procurement.
Creative Barcode kicks out the argument that all ideas are somehow "free," regardless of source or professional status, simply on the premise that many people can have the same idea. Of course they can - that is not disputed.
However, there is a major difference between an idea dreamed up in a "eureka moment" merely articulated on the back of a beer mat and that of a professional, industry-standard concept that is creatively, strategically and holistically developed, articulated and implemented through commercial channels.
In that regard, Creative Barcode is not propagating anti-competitiveness; it is proposing open protection and co-creation underpinned by ethical and equitable trading policies that uphold the value of creativity. And that, perhaps, is the nub of it. It requires an acceptance in the business world that creativity does have a value, and that ideas are derived from applied creative thinking.
Ethical collaborative co-creation is the model most likely to succeed in our modern, fast-moving technology-driven society.
For me and our open innovation society, it can't arrive soon enough.
Maxine Horn is CEO of Creative Barcode and CEO of leading trade body British Design Innovation.