Agent for Ideas

I was born to swan. How do I know this? Probably because work came as such a tremendous shock to my previously natural dreamlike state which did not readily engage itself with such worldly concerns as how to pay the rent and other assorted bills necessary to drawdown breath.

I have often joked indeed that if there is such a thing as a previous life, I was obviously filthy rich and didn't have to lift a finger in it, so inept was I in every way in early adulthood, scarcely able even to make a cup of tea without some calamity ensuing. Now if only I could work out who I was and what I left myself and where (as I have little doubt I'd have probably had the foresight to). Perhaps that £400 past life regression therapy course I once looked into would have been money well spent.

Joking aside, for at least the last five years I have been coming up with product and marketing ideas the like of which have often had listeners gasping: 'That's a great idea - you should sell that.' Or 'That's exactly what I've wanted to buy and can't find anywhere - you should invent it!'

However as a previous expert in ineptitude I know my limits. I am neither a designer nor a marketeer, merely an ideas person. Nor do I have the capital necessary to set up a business, notwithstanding guaranteed business acumen (necessary for even the most failsafe product).

What I want to be able to do is sell a big idea, live off the proceeds for six months and then sell another idea and live off the proceeds for six months. In other words, swan! Fill my life full of friends and writing and philanthropic works and leave behind that 9-5.

Fruitlessly have I therefore trawled the internet looking for a UK agency operating in roughly the same genre as an author's agent - ie the writer does the writing and the agent does the selling. Only with my model the agent wins a percentage of any idea sold. Even this in itself, I am told, is a great business idea and I should do it. They seem to have such in the States, but not the UK, unless they are known by some completely other name here. Though of course there are greater complications involved in selling intellectual copyright and obtaining patents and manufacturing and distribution contracts, not to mention the market research that an idea might need to prove it had legs. Perhaps I should pitch this to the BBC as the next generation 'Dragon's Den'!

Currently I am badgering every politician with anything to do with Education with a wholly new concept in University education to breathe new life into it for the future (the current system of the 3 year degree being unsustainable in the long term for multifarious reasons.)

All thoughts and feedback gratefully appreciated, dear blogmates. Or perhaps you have a thwarted dream you care to share.