I had an opportunity to meet Barry Nalebuff at a conference last weekend. Besides being the co-author of Co-Opetition (one of my favorite books), he runs a site called Why Not? How to Use Everyday Ingenuity to Solve Problems Big and Small.

the WhyNot site is an open-source idea mart for new ideas. Some examples:

Two way horn
Why not make all car horns just as loud inside the car as they are outside? This would quickly eliminate 99% of all unnecessary honking and improve just about everybody’s quality of life. This is one I can’t take credit for, as it was my friend’s idea. But I think it is one that bears repeating.

— dug4000, Dec 2 2003

News ticker during commercials
Some cable news stations have a news ticker going across the bottom of the screen at all times. This is a brilliant idea, since it gives people a reason to look at the screen even if they find the current news item to be boring. For some reason though, they don’t show the news ticker during commercials. If anything, people are more likely to look away from the screen or change the channel during the commercials. They would retain more viewers during their commercials (which would be great for their advertising rates) if they not only show the ticker during commercials, but actually increase the number of items on the ticker then, so that some bits of news will only be shown on the ticker during commercial breaks.

— Curious Cat, Nov 27 2003

it is full of really interesting and ideas that make you want to ask “Why Not?”