Stopping People From Spreading Your Ideas Doesn't Seem Very Smart

from the backwards-thinking dept

Reader Another Mike sent in a long, but interesting story in Fast Company about a supposed "Green Guru" named William McDonough. The profile is not particularly flattering, painting McDonough as a blatant self-promoter at all costs, ignoring various projects that have failed (and even describing them as successes many years after they were clearly massive failures). However, what was most interesting for the stuff we discuss here was his overwhelming desire to retain "control" and "ownership" over his ideas. We see this all too often, and it ends up doing a lot more damage than good -- and that's demonstrated repeatedly with McDonough.

In one example, he was hired by a carpet company to help present a business plan on how to make the company be a positive force for the environment. Yet:
"Bill presented a business plan that said he owned the rights," says John Picard, an environmental consultant on the team, "like it was his intellectual property. He was asking for an obscene amount [of money]."
And that resulted in the company parting ways with McDonough:
"The issue is that some of the things he thinks he originated no one owns. These are things that need to be blown up, not sequestered down with a patent." Interface went on to develop its recyclable carpet, now a nearly $1 billion business, without McDonough. The company confirmed the accuracy of Picard's account.
Next up, was his supposed "success story" with Nike:
McDonough, who includes a Nike shoe in his standard slide show, recalls the period fondly. "The great thing about working with Nike was it had tremendous interest in communicating with its supply chain, and it took cradle-to-cradle ideas to heart and developed its own strategy for communicating across an immense supply chain, over 3,000 vendors," he tells me. "Incredible. It inspired us. A lot of what we do today is inspired by our clients."

The folks at Nike remember the collaboration a little differently. "It was devastating that we couldn't go forward with it," says someone who worked closely on the project and requested anonymity. When McDonough's team finished building a list of approved materials for manufacturing, after two years and a hefty consulting fee, Nike told McDonough the time had come to share the details with its thousands of vendors. To the company's shock, McDonough responded that he owned the list -- it was proprietary. "He wanted to charge us for every supplier we rolled it out to. We didn't own it after we paid all this money, which made no sense," says the person from the Nike team. "You can develop lists until you're blue in the face, but if you don't have effective ways to roll that out to the supply chain, it's not going to change it." Nike, which went on to improve its supply chain independently, confirmed this account to Fast Company and said that, given the huge amount McDonough was demanding, it decided to terminate the relationship. The company adds that "neither Bill nor MBDC designed materials for Nike."
Once again, in his demand for ownership of ideas, he's actually shut down. Finally, perhaps the most ridiculous and damning story of all involves a non-profit that McDonough himself tried to set up to promote the term "cradle-to-cradle," which he has trademarked as a description of his process. Of course, he didn't actually coin it:
Even the term cradle to cradle, for which McDonough has applied for a trademark, isn't his at all. According to Hunter Lovins, cofounder of the Rocky Mountain Institute think tank, "Walter Stahel in Switzerland actually coined the phrase 25 years ago, long before Bill started using it."
The whole nonprofit, called GreenBlue was supposed to be used to promote "cradle-to-cradle" and build up McDonough's reputation. And, in what appeared to be a contrary move to his earlier "ownership" position, McDonough announced GreenBlue with a plan to "give away the cradle-to-cradle protocol freely." Except, he didn't. The first employee at GreenBlue grew disenchanted, noting that McDonough did nothing to make "cradle-to-cradle" info publicly available. So, he pleaded with the board to jettison McDonough -- which eventually happened. And then, after McDonough left, GreenBlue became a success:
It wasn't until McDonough left that GreenBlue, specifically its Sustainable Packaging Coalition, took off. The coalition now includes 190 companies -- Procter & Gamble, Kraft, and Starbucks among them -- that are working to develop environmentally sound packaging practices. "Many people still think of the Sustainable Packaging Coalition as a project that has succeeded because of Bill McDonough, which is simply not the case," Pearson stresses.
Even better? Now that GreenBlue is a success, McDonough, who started it is demanding that GreenBlue pay lots of money to use that "cradle-to-cradle" trademark:
Earlier this year, his materials firm, MBDC, told GreenBlue it would have to license the term cradle to cradle if the nonprofit wanted to use it. "Our respective lawyers went back and forth at substantial cost to GreenBlue," says Pearson, now GreenBlue's executive director, "[but] I don't have the financial resources, nor the strong motivation, to stop them." By 2010, the very nonprofit that McDonough founded will be obliged to use terms such as "green chemistry," "closed-loop material systems," and "industrial ecology" to describe its work. Thanks to McDonough and his lawyers, Pearson says, "we will eliminate the phrase cradle to cradle from any of our materials."
So, in his quest to "own" all of these ideas, he's created a bunch of failed projects, and done little to actually help create successful environmental solutions. Yet, when he gets out of the way, and others are able to more freely share ideas, stuff gets done. Maybe he shouldn't focus so much on owning ideas, and be a little more open to the fact that if he shared more freely, and there were actual success stories built around his work, the demand to hire him in the future would be much, much stronger.
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Filed Under: cradle to cradle, intellectual property, ownership, william mcdonough


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  1. identicon
    Ima Fish, 8 Dec 2008 @ 1:36pm

    Has anyone considered that maybe McDonough is just a scammer? He has people pay him money to come up with ideas. But when it's finally time for him to turn those ideas over, he demands a ransom to be paid first. Which of course the corporation rejects paying because it'd be asinine to do so. Basically, he gets money for doing absolutely nothing of value.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Hulser, 8 Dec 2008 @ 1:41pm

    What's a good term for what he does?

    So, in his quest to "own" all of these ideas, he's created a bunch of failed projects, and done little to actually help create successful environmental solutions.

    Grave-to-grave?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. icon
    ConceptJunkie (profile), 8 Dec 2008 @ 1:51pm

    Has anyone introduced this guy to Al Gore?

    They seem like they would have a lot in common.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 8 Dec 2008 @ 1:57pm

    "Stopping People From Spreading Your Ideas Doesn't Seem Very Smart"

    Smart for whom?

    What is good for the economy is not necesaary good for the individual and what is good for the individual is not necessary good for the economy.

    For the individual it makes perfect sense to place a tole on ideas while for the economy this makes no sense at all.

    The idea of patten was to pay people for spending large amounts of time and money only to have some one steal the idea and use it for free with out paying the cost associated with the idea's development. This is a concept that works very well when it cost millions to develop the idea and is a complete failure when the cost of development is approximately zero which makes a good preliminary test of whether an idea is patentable or not.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    AZCoastie, 8 Dec 2008 @ 2:37pm

    Trademark madness

    Trademark, "cradle to cradle"?

    Is that anything like a certain e-publisher that trademarked the genre "romantica"? Which of course leads me to the question, "Who hold the trademark on SciFi and Western?"

    link to this | view in thread ]

  6. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 8 Dec 2008 @ 2:39pm

    Re:

    Maybe next time you should actually read the article. This article has exactly nothing, nada, zero, zilch, bupkus -- in other words, NOT A FUCKING THING -- about patents. Go back to watching the Three Stooges.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  7. identicon
    AZCoastie, 8 Dec 2008 @ 2:42pm

    Trademark madness

    Trademark, "cradle to cradle"?

    Is that anything like a certain e-publisher that trademarked the genre "romantica"? Which of course leads me to the question, "Who hold the trademark on SciFi and Western?"

    link to this | view in thread ]

  8. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 8 Dec 2008 @ 2:52pm

    The guy seems like a tool, but your conclusion ".. if he shared more freely ... the demand to hire him in the future would be much, much stronger" does not necessarily follow.

    For all you know, people would just take his success story, distill it, and pass it around.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  9. identicon
    Lawrence D'Oliveiro, 8 Dec 2008 @ 4:19pm

    Re: "Sharing More Freely:"

    For all you know, people would just take his success story, distill it, and pass it around.

    Instead of which, we have taken his failure story, distilled it, and are now passing it around.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  10. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 8 Dec 2008 @ 5:00pm

    Re:

    Um, all the examples given show that what Mike put forth is most likely. His behavior to horde rather than share is what ejected him from these places and went with plan B. In some cases the plan never changed and he was just shunted out (such as with GreenBlue).

    link to this | view in thread ]

  11. identicon
    d, 9 Dec 2008 @ 12:08am

    Re:

    For all you know, people would just take his success story, distill it, and pass it around.

    Like Six Sigma? Oh wait, even though people know what it is, companies paid to be "taught" for many years more.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  12. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 9 Dec 2008 @ 8:43am

    The guy gets $50K to speak at conferences (plus expenses) and you say he isn't very smart?

    Mike, how much do you get for your speaking slots?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  13. identicon
    Lucretious, 9 Dec 2008 @ 10:32am

    Re:

    Thats like claiming the American public gets quality TV programming by using ratings as an example.

    There are plenty of suckers with checkbooks.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  14. identicon
    another mike, 9 Dec 2008 @ 11:51am

    not the subby

    i was trying to talk up Wired's piece on brock pierce and the rise and fall of IGE. eliminating gold-farming bots and the companies that cheat with them off my favorite mmo is more interesting to me. MMOs would be very different places if there were sanctioned locations to trade real-world money for game world items and money. i don't think it would be a better place.
    i don't know who sent in this story but it wasn't me.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  15. identicon
    srosan weng, 10 Dec 2008 @ 8:04am

    air jordan shoes

    Please kindly visit our website: http://photos.i.cn.yahoo.com/srosan2004/ We have many NEW fashion nike Jordan1-21,Airforce ones,shox,AirMax ,dunk,Bape shoes,Prada, gucci,Timberland,adidas,Puma and clothing in stock.And very cheap (from $25/pair to $50/pair).They are all very popular recently.
    Nice to talk with you on MSN. (srosan2004@hotmail.com)

    link to this | view in thread ]

  16. identicon
    srosan weng, 10 Dec 2008 @ 8:05am

    nike shoes

    Please kindly visit our website: http://photos.i.cn.yahoo.com/srosan2004/ We have many NEW fashion nike Jordan1-21,Airforce ones,shox,AirMax ,dunk,Bape shoes,Prada, gucci,Timberland,adidas,Puma and clothing in stock.And very cheap (from $25/pair to $50/pair).They are all very popular recently.
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    link to this | view in thread ]

  17. identicon
    Cradle to Cradle, 10 Jan 2009 @ 1:39am

    Cralde to Cradle

    More on the cradle to cradle concept can be found here: http://www.product-life.org/en/cradle-to-cradle

    link to this | view in thread ]

  18. identicon
    blog, 24 May 2012 @ 8:40pm

    Thats like claiming the American public gets quality.

    link to this | view in thread ]


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