Digital brokerage works when the inventory is real: experts, equipment, organisations, open collaborations. We have built that inventory with a tone that does not pretend innovation is a lifestyle.
The extra is the work-package exchange. Search finds the people. The package tells them what to do next.
If you have used a research search box before, you will feel at home — and perhaps slightly more amused.
The reason search alone is insufficient is worth spelling out. Suppose you find the right professor. You now face a series of questions that search cannot help with: is she available, does she want this kind of problem, what does she cost, what will she need from you, and what happens to the intellectual property. Every one of those is a conversation, and most collaborations die during them rather than before.
A published work package answers all of them in advance, in public, once. The publisher writes the terms down. Applicants either accept them or do not apply. The awkward conversation happens on a web page instead of over six weeks of email, and the people who would have withdrawn at week five withdraw at minute two.
There is a second effect we did not anticipate. Publishing a package forces the publisher to decide what they want. A surprising number of organisations arrive with a vague sense that they should be collaborating, and leave with a specific job description because writing one was the only way to use the board.
We are content to be the noticeboard. The work belongs to the people doing it.