If you ever wondered where new internet ideas come from – they come from places like the minds of the people who entered the Exit ‘09 contest. The contest, sponsored by a slew of Israeli companies (chief among them Israeli development house Sergata) is open to anyone with a good idea – and if the idea is good enough to get into the contest, they could win a “startup package” worth $250,000 (including $100,000 in cash)! Even better – the format of the contest is a sort of “reality TV” show, where fans of startup ideas can vote for their favorites, with a panel of judges (top people from Google Israel, IBM, The Marker, and others) picking the winner.

Most of the 26 contestants put up a video on the Exit ‘09 site describing their idea or technology. I wrote about the contest in a Jerusalem Post article (which you can see here), but here I wanted to say something about the videos (ie, the ideas) – which got me thinking about the whole business of “innovation.”

There were a couple of really original ideas – one entrepreneur wants to put up a site where people who wear hearing aids can adjust them using a website, another plans a “pet interface” site for dogs and cats who are at home all day alone (they can communicate with their masters, or even with other pets!). Another site would provide a “virtual shrink” for counseling and coaching.

But many of the other ideas seemed to be very similar to already existing web sites and services. So, if the contest was based on “innovation” – having a really good, different idea – many of the contenders wouldn’t have qualified to be in the contest, based on what I could see.

But modern “innovation” – the kind that makes you hundreds of millions on the internet – isn’t necessarily just about having a unique idea. It can be about having a unique twist on an existing idea. It’s about the packaging, the marketing, the way you convince people to use it – the way YOU see it being used. You can take an existing idea and tweak it, turning it into something big – much bigger than the original idea you were tweaking. That’s really all you need!

Believe it or not, one of the biggest “breakthrough ideas” of the internet era – distributing music over a network – is actually a century old! The Tel-Musici Company of Wilmington, Delaware, was, according to this article, streaming music directly to users’ homes in 1909 – via the telephone! Customers would call Tel-Musici and order a selection, and for three cents (seven cents for lengthy operas), the company would stream music to the customer’s phonograph, via a special transmitter connecting the phone and the phonograph that “intensifies and enlarges the volume of sound of all phonographic records but eliminates the metallic, rasping and grating features which have heretofore constituted an objectionable feature of phonographic concerts.”

I couldn’t find any references on whether Napster inventor Shawn Fanning was aware of Tel-Musici, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he was. And there are lots of other examples of successful programs that conquered the market from less well-marketed previous offerings.

In other words, to succeed in the internet business, you don’t necessarily even need an original idea! And one thing I get from watching the videos on the Exit ‘09 site is that you don’t necessarily need much technical knowledge either (many of the presenters say straight out that they don’t have a technical background). And in fact, the premise of Exit ‘09 is that the winning idea gets lots of help from the dozen or so companies offering programming, marketing, and branding help. All that gets outsourced to the service providers. In other words, the only thing you have to bring to the table is the “tweak” – the little twist that will put even an already existing idea into a new light. Exit ‘09 proves it (and a number of friends of mine who began successful startups prove it too).

Wow! It that’s all it takes, what’s stopping us from raking in the bucks?!?

I wasn’t looking to become the “poster boy” for Jewish-Arab coexistence when I set out north with my wife last Friday. After 19 years of marriage, we couldn’t resist an invitation from friends celebrating a family event in a Galilee hotel over Shabbat. Our 18 year old daughter, on leave from her National Service job in the Herzl Museum in Jerusalem, was primed to watch our three year old, together with their siblings (15, 14, and 11). Needless to say, we were extremely worried about how “the baby” would take the absence of both parents for the first time in her life (at least one of us had always been with her when the other was traveling or away), but as it turned out, that was to be the least of our worries – the kids, including the youngest, all had a blast.

Other troubles were waiting for us down the road. To get to northern Israel from our part of the country (western Shomron/Sharon), the most efficient route is to take Route 6 north to its current terminus, and then Road 65 east and north. That road, the easternmost within “Green Line” Israel, passes through an area called Wadi Ara, part of a geographic construct called “the triangle.” Its residents are almost exclusively Muslim Arabs, and the centerpiece of the area is a town called Um el-Faham. The most recent news stories about this area came out a couple of months ago, when several Israeli activists got permission to hold an “Israeli flag parade” in the town; the High Court authorized the parade, after police had turned down requests to hold it over and over. It turned out police were right, to some extent; there was minor rioting, and police worked hard to keep the small group of Jews and the much larger group of local residents protesting the parade at bay.

In general, though, Jews – especially people “like us,” observant residents of what some would call a “settlement,” would stay far away from Um el-Faham, and probably never even get within 10 kilometers of the place – if not for Road 65. As it turned out, however, that is where my car decided to break down. What happened and who’s to blame (I have a whole theory about that) are less important than the fact that the car essentially became undriveable an hour and a half before Shabbat – when we still had an hour or so to go to get to our destination!

Kids in yeshivas and day schools – and even secular kids here in Israel – all know the tales of how people sacrifice for the Sabbath, dropping valuable merchandise, money, wallets, etc. in order not to violate the holy day. But in those stories, the traveler always seems to be in a forest or other relatively quiet or calm area, and since in the old days travelers could be on the road for days at a time, they usually carried at least some provisions with them. We, on the other hand, were in the heart of one of the biggest Arab areas in Israel. The date, it’s useful to note, was May 15 – the date Israeli Arabs commemorate as “Nakba Day.”

But all that was a million miles away from our minds. We were preparing for a fun weekend, our first chance to see how the “other half” (the half whose kids stay home when the parents go away!) live. A/C running, music on the radio, it was like a dream. And then the nightmare began. It started with a “funny noise” (I should know better by now what the noises lead to!). But the car seemed OK, so I ignored it. All of the sudden, a little past a place called (I kid you not) “Al Aryan,” the car started kicking and bucking. Impossible to steer, with the temperature gauge shooting up in seconds, I figured we had to get off the road right away. But where? Fortunately, Road 65 is a major commercial strip, so there are businesses and strip malls every few kilometers. Now I needed a gas station – some place to park the car and check out the problem.

And that’s when I met Musa – the Um el-Faham mechanic who saved the day. Which story I will relate in part two (when I get around to writing it!).