The innovative Samaritan

America's one big advantage in a rapidly globalizing marketplace is a traditional penchant for innovation. But we're fast losing the free, buoyant flow of ideation by dousing it with the viscous chill of litigation.

Celebrating diversity is considered politically correct. But in a world where innovation mediates survival and the shelf?life of The Next Big Thing grows shorter each week, ability to observe the world from disparate perspectives is commercially correct as well.

It's no coincidence that American innovation rises in the west and sets in the east. California's rich assortment of Asian, European and Hispanic paradigms has proved just the right nutrient mix to fertilize Silicone Valley's frenetic garden of killer applications and environmental prescience.

But the ecology of commerce is such that a top predator is bound to evolve to thin out the herd of ideas. It's the tort industry.

Want to observe how novelty fares in a "tortacracy?" Try submitting a new idea for improvement of a product. You'll be rebuffed in the chilliest of terms.

Don't blame the manufacturer or service provider you're trying to help. Their Legal Department drafted the dismissive boiler?plate letter you'll get back, justifiably fearing all submitted ideas because they are often trolled bait meant to lure the company into an intellectual property law suit. Thus the process of discouraging ideas from customers has evolved from requiring a signature on a boilerplate release form to a simple, crisp statement that your ideas are not welcome.

Mix enough vodka in the dough and your biscuits won't rise because the yeast has been killed off. Innovation is like yeast, spreading through commerce to make it grow. Ideas create changing environments where more ideas flourish. This dynamic has always been America's competitive edge.

But the immense profit in promoting litigation is vodka in America's dough.

We've reached the point where the most realistic harm we dread is an assault from the judicial arm of our own national or state government. If that seems an extraordinary assertion, just compare the casualty and liability premiums on your own insurance bills. Even in the casualty column, a huge fraction of health insurance costs goes to defend caregivers and pharmaceutical companies against excessive and contrived malpractice actions.

In recent years, to prevent passers-by from looking the other way and not daring to stop to render aid to accident victims for fear of law suits, states have passed "Good Samaritan" laws. Might an analogous "innovative Samaritan" law benefit the American economy by letting businesses accept ideas from customers who just want to help make products and services better for everyone?

Passing "Innovative Samaritan" laws might release a flood of good new ideas. Under such a law, folks who wanted their ideas considered would be obliged to state unambiguously whether the idea was offered for the general good, or in hope of some eventual form of compensation.

Where no compensation was expected, the submission would specifically invoke by title the state or Federal "Innovative Samaritan" code waiving any expectation of compensation.

If a company chose of its own volition to reward such a submitter in any way, then the law would provide that such rewarding did not change the situation at all; no risk of penalty should discourage a business from being as generous in spirit as the person offering an idea.

An "Innovative Samaritan" law would also protect the submitter of an idea from all legal liability arising from any mischance resulting from its application. The burden of analysis and safety would remain entirely with the business as if the idea had originated entirely within their R&D lab.

An "Innovative Samaritan" law would amount to a sharp change of direction from the trend of the last century. Arguably, it would mark a turn back toward the unbridled optimism of the free-wheeling 1800s.

That would be a good thing.

The heavy weight of liability and medical malpractice insurance on all we buy and sell rests on the supposition that fear of judicial sanctions is effective in compelling caution and incenting right action.

It's bizarre that an enormous proportion of a modern nation's economy could be based on such an improbable, untested proposition.

Anyone suggesting that industrial production or education should be designed around an elaborate system of dread and punishment would be written off as a crackpot. Yet, though liability law, we take it for granted that the regulation of driving skill and the practice of medicine will be perfected by just such a system.

Chilling the public's ability to contribute to the betterment of its condition is a great loss. Cash flow is neither a proper metric for justice nor the best stimulus for creative ideation and change. A way to test this would be to pass "Innovative Samaritan" laws in several innovative states, monitoring the results closely.

That's just an idea, of course.

(Mooresville's Stan Thompson is a retired strategic planner and environmental futurist for BellSouth Telecommunications. His column appears every other week in the Tribune. Email him at: HST2nd@aol.com)