In 1979, I called the Encyclopedia Brittanica because I thought their product could be computerized. They followed up by sending a salesman, trying to sell me a set of books. He was persistent. I kept trying to explain that my interest was in working with them to create an electronic product. I even did a demo of what a computerized Brittanica would look like. I didn't buy the books and they never really heard my idea.

This keeps happening.

Comcast fired me as a customer because I was using too much bandwidth, but I was developing software that could make use of all that bandwidth. At the same time they paid hundreds of millions for a software company whose products they never used. They couldn't even send someone to talk with me about my usage of the net to find out what I was up to. I wasn't a complete unknown, and the technology I was developing ended up being pretty valuable.

Today it's the Washington Post.  I like what they've done with their news flow. The stories are vastly more interesting these days. But I'm not going to pay to read it, today at least. And if I do pay at some point in the future, I'm going to feel sick about it. I already feel sick about it.

They have a paywall. I don't know what its limits are. But when I click on a link after say the 10th of the month, I get a form saying I must pay to read. So I don't read the article, and it doesn't pass through my linkblogging system. Not a big deal, but it is worth a blog post after a number of months putting up with the frustration.

It feels the same as the experience with the Encyclopedia Britannica in the late 70s. 

I guess the point is this. 

The great idea that helps you grow might not come from a consultant or an off-site or through high-price acquisitions. It's one of the reasons silos aren't great for idea flow. Companies are not set up to receive good ideas from places they aren't expecting them. That's why businesses that bet on having low walls, permeable walls, or no walls keeping out the ideas might do better than those who think the walls create value. 

I hope Bezos helps the Washington Post be creative with this. There probably are better ways to make money from news than restricting the flow of links to stories to people who pay to read them.  However, I have to say Amazon itself isn't very good at having ideas permeate their corporate wall. Luckily they have a number of good ideas internally, and must be doing something right there. But they could do a lot better with AWS. But that's a topic for another day. ;-)