Idea generation #38: Tim O'Reily on 'be good' and other 'be good' ideas

Great week as there are a couple of interesting reading materials that surface to my attention:

Tim O'Reily on 'Be Good': It is good to see high profile bloggers like O'Reily getting behind Umair Haque's vision of bringing 2.0 to solve real issues. Below is a nice list of issues that warrant a 2.0 makeover. I have blogged about a couple of ideas on some of these topics:

• earth monitoring,
  
• carbon markets, (opportunities on personal carbon trading, first post on personal carbon trading)
  
• energy efficiency of electronic devices,
  
• home energy management
• collaborative scientific research,
  
• early detection of infectious disease outbreaks, (post on early detection system)
  
• personalized medicine,
  
• resource discovery,
  
• new materials
  

Financial literacy: Great article by the economist on the need for financial literacy. I fully agreed, and looking at the mess of the current markets, have to concurre this is a real issue waiting for a 2.0 solution. What are the best 2.0 startups out there in the education market? Can we apply their models here?

Small businesses not giving healthcare coverage to employees: I blog about this a couple of months ago and suggested that a network model is the right one to use. This article just confirms the need for it. See also my related post about group purchases

Questionable practices at rating agencies: One market that is clearly in need of a disruption. This should not be hard. If people can build an encyclopedia through collective intelligence, I don't see why we cannot do it for rating agencies.

Posted in: idea generation,marketplace,startup business ideas