Good ideas rise on the shoulders of fair ideas. Great ideas rise from good ones.

A comment to my last post has inspired what I think is a great idea. You be the judge.

The comment said, “If only I could put this extra 30 pounds out on the curb…and wait for someone to take it away.” Meant in jest, perhaps, but — what if?

On a visit to Germany one year, we noticed tons of furniture and other goods in front of people’s houses. We were perplexed. But our hosts explained that on a certain day, people set out their unused goods for others to have. Anyone in the community was free to shop through other people’s castoffs. Junking Day, they called it.

Do you see the connection? We have people who have extra pounds. And the world is full of people who are underfed and need extra pounds. So what if we could post our pounds for exchange? “Free fat for all!” Upload 30, download 30. (Of course, somebody would try to commercialize the concept, and try to charge through Paypal. But that’s not the spirit of it, really. I’m thinking something more like the original Napster.)

That’s just the beginning. I also know people who lack the natural hormones required for growth. Oh, what they would give to be a few inches taller. I also know people who bump their heads on door frames because they are so tall. Like pounds, the world would benefit from a redistribution of inches.

In an ideal world, we would have a standard. Pounds or grams or stones? Inches or centimeters or hands? But I’ll leave the details to you. I’m a big-ideas guy. Which leads to the point of all this:

Big is not necessarily great. But all ideas start someplace.