100 good ideas

Life is short. In many ways, really. But from a professional standpoint, what gets me sometimes is the fact that most of us can only (try to) become experts in one profession. Often in fact, just a small sub-sector of that specific profession. Take me for example, I’ve been working in finance for the past 14 years. Professionally, all I know about is corporate finance stuff (mergers, acquisitions, disposals, etc.) but that’s about it. Nothing else in finance: portfolio management, trading, capital flows just to mention a few. And definitively nothing about other professions or sector (advertising, media, medicine, politics…etc.).

Thing is, most of the time, knowing some knowledge (even a little!) about how other jobs work, makes you better at your own job. Let alone the fact that it broadens your horizons!

So, here’s my solution. A job-exchange platform (I know, that’s itself not new!) where people, with the consent of their own employers, can embark on a 2-weeks job assignment in another sector. Say a Banking guy could spend 2 weeks learning about Marketing with Coca Cola. A general doctor could learnt about Physics Research at CERN. A short but professionally enriching experience and a window on another world.

Why should companies accept the “alien”? After all, those who will need to “take-care” of him/ her will need to sacrifice some of their own time to explain things. Simple. Because if they do, they will have the benefit of being an “alien” in a job they’d to experience. You give , you get. And we are all better off :) #knowledgeeconomy  

And here’s myfirst idea. Perhaps not the most impressive one but one which I think would be very useful and would definitely find a good set of (very) dedicated users.

Ever felt you are getting sick? I am not talking about the usual cold. I am talking something more serious, with symptoms you have never experienced before. If you are half as hypochondriac as I am, the first thing you’d do is run to the Internet to see what your symptoms may correspond to. And when you do that, all you’ll find is thousands of forums where random sick people describe their symptoms to other random sick people asking them to help diagnose their diseases. But in NONE of the conversation trails, the person actually reveals what disease they were eventually diagnosed with or if by any chance (like it very often happens!) the symptoms actually went away completely.

Result: you become confused and scared.

So, here is the idea: a simple app where people can record their symptoms as they appear (sort of like a “symptoms diary”) and eventually reveal the final diagnosis the doctors made or weather the issues went away entirely.

Why would this thing be useful? 2 reasons:

Users can compare their symptoms’ evolution with others and check the percentage overlap to get better insight into what disease they may have. No more useless internet surfing.                                                                

Doctors and academics could draw on the wealth of data present on the app (particularly the development of symptoms over time) to conduct better research / improve their personal knowledge.

How would this thing make money? Like anything related to medicine and big pharma, plenty of leverage here. A cut of private doctor’s appointment or on medicine sales would be a good start.

For the past 5years, I tried. I really did. To come up with a good web-idea, to assemble areliable team of people, and create a successful business. And for the past 5years, I have FAILED. Miserably. Meanwhile, I learnt 3 important things. The 3 golden rules: 1) never venture into a sector you don’t know 2) never employee or partner-up with people whose capabilities you cannot judge (because they will (try to) fuck you) and 3) never create a product which you will not use yourself.