Mark Cuban wants to fund your business idea. Really.

A lot of people don’t like billionaire Mark Cuban–founder of broadcast.com, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, unabashed competitor on Dancing with the Stars–but you have to admit he’s not boring. Take a look at his latest idea, the Mark Cuban Stimulus Plan–Open Source Funding. Basically, it boils down to this: He will invest money in business ideas (if he likes them) that people present for all to see (and use with no strings attached) in the comments section on his blog, blog maverick. There are a few conditions, of course, among them that the business must have break-even cash flow in 60 days and it cannot be a business model based on advertising revenue. 

So why is Cuban doing this? Basically, he wants to use technology to spread great ideas  that actually create value to stimulate the economy. Will this plan by itself make much of a dent in our economic morass? Probably not (though one must grant that it is theoretically possible Cuban could wind up funding the next great idea in the history of capitalism). Even so, what I love about this the way it leverages the interactive space to release a tremendous amount of creative energy into the marketplace. More companies should be following his lead to lift themselves out of the doldrums. 

In the future we’re going to see far more than consumer-generated advertising, we’re going to see consumer product, operations and strategy development. It might be a good idea for Detroit to start yesterday.