What is an idea worth?

It is about the commodity that we sell in marketing. It is talk and ideas and creativity and perception and a million powerful business lubricators, that unfortunately can't be precisely pinpointed, put on scale, measured, packed in a box and coded for delivery.

It is the intangible-ness of marketing that makes it fun-an intoxicating blend of science and art-and incredibly frustrating as well. How do you measure brain output? An idea can be worth a million gazillion dollars or absolutely nothing -- depending on innumerable variables and a whole lot of luck.

So, how much is an idea worth? What matters is its value to the receiver, and how much he or she is ultimately ready to pay for it. In this regional, there are many who become quick business wonders, without ever learning and cultivat ing an appreciation for 'mental output' and intellectual property. This will perhaps gradually change once business and the industrial landscape become more mature and sophisticated.

Right now it is tough out there. Case in point, the advertising scene, where companies believe it is their corporate birthright to have multiple agencies pitching for measly bits of business. They solicit ideas and concepts 'for free' and sometimes adopt them with little or no changes-without ever having had the intention to pay for them.

Many companies are downright time-wasters. They send out convoluted briefs that take days or even weeks to prepare and later decide that they either never had the budget, nor the inclination to run the activity in the first place.

And by then several agencies have already put in so much time that they are compelled to write the whole thing off as a financial loss. Sometimes agencies get entangled in 'sounding board' exercises where dim-witted marketing managers set aside agency submissions as inspirational fodder that they can later pass off as their own ideas.

There is no doubt that there are many companies are guilty of affording little respect for intellectual output-this is because many companies do business the old fashioned way and only fathom concrete merchandise that can be assessed, inventoried and audited. A great example of one marketing product that continuously befuddles finance departments is research.

Research can help point your company in the right direction, towards streamlining operation and efficiently targeting the right kind of products and services to the right target groups, but in reality precious few companies believe research is even necessary.

There are mind-boggling examples of companies squandering away millions on useless campaigns and pinching pennies on a few hundred dollars worth of research. I remember recently overhearing an executive say: 'They asked me for US 15,000 for research and I just laughed at them. For that price I can easily upgrade all the computers in the entire company.'

Yet, also in advertising, perhaps the greatest example of something that is totally abstract and highly immeasurable is the value associated with brands. Even though there are whole industries devoted to 'measuring' and capturing every minutiae of the world's top brands, real brand value is so intangible it only exists in the 'customer's mind'. Whether a brand is built deliberately or forms accidentally, for many global corporations their brand value forms a large part of the company's book value. The GE brand, for example, represents 17.25 percent, or $61 billion, of the company's assets , according to CoreBrand.

On the subject of logos, designing them is an especially infuriating part of agency business because of the little respect that is given to intellectual output. Typically, an agency gets a brief from a company to design a logo, along with other agencies as well , and if you're lucky, one of you will get the job. But I have heard of a company executive who solicited submissions, rejected everything, then showed all the artwork to a 13 year old computer whiz who lived next door to him to design something 'for a song.'

If you recently attended the IIR conference 'Leaders in Business', you would have heard the respected gurus and futurists wax lyrical on the new age of 'the idea.' Their prophecy: fail to recognize and reward an idea and you will stifle intellectual output and, ultimately, innovation. One way we can all ride the gravy train to a better future is to believe in the power of the mind, and to place a suitable dollar value on it as well.