Turn a local problem into a useful result.

What Idea Box helps you do

An idea can begin with an everyday difficulty: a tool that is hard to use, a service missing in your village, a product that could be adapted, or a useful activity your community wants to organise. You do not need to claim a completely new invention.

You can choose an invention, adaptation, local service or local supply opportunity. Your goal can be enterprise, community or learning. The starting point is a project you own, with space to explain the problem and work on it.

Here, materialisation means putting the idea into practice and recording a useful outcome. That might be delivering a repair, supplying an item, trying a prototype with a user, completing a community project or learning that a proposed approach should change. Idea Box organises the project and its records; people still do the practical work.

Getting started

1. Sign in to Know To Win. Open Services, then Idea Box. My Projects is your starting place for your own work.
2. Check the service membership. The app shows the current fee and access period before you join. Idea Box membership uses purchased credits, and renewal is a choice you make explicitly.
3. Create a draft. Give it a clear title, then explain the problem, your proposed approach, who it helps and where it matters. Choose its opportunity type and goal. Add subjects, help needed and any relevant hardware safety information.
4. Save your work. You can start with a title and develop the explanation over time. Saving and submitting for public moderation are different actions.

Public participation needs a valid date of birth and, for a minor, an appropriate linked guardian. Conversations have additional verification and guardian controls. Capital opening and consent have adult-owner requirements. These checks serve different purposes; joining the service does not replace them.

The journey: idea to materialisation

The owner moves the project between stages. Stages describe the work, while publication describes who can see an approved version. Neither one automatically changes the other.

1. Explore
2. Plan
3. Test
4. Build
5. Launch
6. Operate

It is not a rigid one-way staircase

From Plan you can move to Test or Build. From Test you can return to Plan or move to Build or Launch. From Build you can return to Plan or Test, or move to Launch. From Launch you can return to Plan or Test, or move to Operate. From Operate you can return to Plan or Test. Relevant moves back to planning or testing require an explanation.

The same launch preparation fields apply to enterprise, community and learning projects. You can also close a project as completed at an earlier stage when that accurately describes its outcome. There is no requirement to turn every learning project into a business.

A worked example: a local bicycle repair service

This is an illustration of how someone could use the tools, not a claim about an actual project or its results.

Private work and public publication

Your draft is not automatically published

The working version is for you and currently authorised workspace participants. To share an idea with the member community, complete the submission requirements, acknowledge the disclosure and submit it for moderation. A moderator approves or rejects the submitted version.

If you edit an already published idea, the last approved version remains visible while the new version is private or waiting for review. Public approval of an idea does not automatically publish its proofs, testimonials or other contributions.

Choose carefully what to disclose

Published content is available to authorised Idea Box members. Business records, private review material, reports and consented provider information have more limited audiences. Do not place secrets, private contact details or material you are not entitled to disclose in a public submission. Saving or publishing an idea does not register a patent or create a confidentiality agreement.

Originals and translations

You can author content in your language. Translated views help other people read it, and translation may take time or be unavailable. The original remains the authored record. Community search can use the current approved original title and its available English title; a private or unapproved replacement is not a public search result.

If a submission is rejected or withdrawn, revise and save a fresh working version before submitting it again. Withdrawing a pending update does not remove an earlier approved publication.

The records that turn an ambition into work

Tasks and experiments

Tasks describe work and responsibility. Owners and assigned mentors can organise tasks; the owner or the task’s assigned person can record progress. Completion needs a note, and dropping work needs a reason. Experiments describe something to learn: a question, a planned action, an expected result and the actual result. Owners and team members can create experiments; the owner or author manages an existing one.

Business Brief and Offer Preview

The owner records who uses or pays for the result, existing alternatives, the offer, prices and costs, delivery, support, cash timing and resources. Unknown money values can be left unknown where the form allows. The brief is a planning tool, not an automatically generated business plan.

Milestones and reporting periods

Record offers made, first delivery, first sale and repeat sale as milestones. Reporting periods can capture orders, deliveries, customers, repeat customers, sales, refunds, costs, owner drawings and hours worked. Current periods cannot overlap. Correct an entry with an explanation or withdraw it with a reason. A displayed surplus is calculated from your figures, not an audited financial statement.

Evidence: notes, links and files

Describe what a piece of evidence supports, how it was produced, its result and limitations. Link it to relevant work when useful. A proof can be a note, a link or a file. Supported new files include PDF documents up to 20 MB and JPEG, PNG or WebP images up to 10 MB.

Proof starts privately. Submitting it for public moderation is a separate choice and requires a published idea and the applicable participation checks. Private files have protected access; publishing a proof deliberately changes its audience. Evidence helps explain a claim, but adding a file does not make that claim independently verified.

All the roles—and what each one means

One person can hold different roles on different projects. Owning one idea, mentoring another and commenting on a third are separate relationships.

Bring in people when the work needs them

Recruit into a clear role

1. The owner creates a role with a title, note and available seats, then opens recruitment.
2. An eligible member applies to that specific open role on a public idea and supplies an application note.
3. The owner reviews applications and accepts or declines. Acceptance checks that the role is still open, space remains and the current eligibility requirements hold.
4. Acceptance creates the team membership directly. The applicant does not need a second join action.

Applicants follow their own records in Support Inbox. A pending application can be withdrawn. A member can leave, and the owner can remove a member, with the required reason. A later application after a terminal outcome is subject to the current role, capacity and eligibility rules.

Invite a mentor

A mentor maintains a profile with their requested domains and languages. An administrator decides the approved domains and any reviewer domains. The owner finds a designated mentor and sends a project-specific invitation in an approved domain. The mentor accepts or declines from Support Inbox.

An invitation by itself does not open the private workspace. An accepted, currently authorised assignment does. The owner or mentor may end an active assignment, and an administrator may revoke it. Profile suspension or loss of the required relationship can remove access even when the page was opened earlier.

Conversations and mentoring logs

People can open the project conversation when enough current eligible participants are available. It uses Know To Win messaging, with its own verification, guardian, suspension and block rules. Removing a participant or ending their access affects the project conversation too.

The owner or assigned mentor can record a mentoring meeting, its attendees, notes, next actions and references to work. An optional tuition-session reference supplies context; it does not turn the project into a tuition booking or create a mentor payment.

Human expert reviews: understand a finding in context

Review domains are hardware, software, design, finance, legal, manufacturing and community. A reviewer must be a currently assigned mentor with the appropriate reviewer authority; a self-written profile is not enough.

1. Load the review scope. It includes the current idea and tasks, with business information for a finance review.
2. The reviewer submits a finding. It includes a scope note, a verdict—proceed, revise or stop—and can include risks, suggested actions and a conflict disclosure.
3. The owner reads and may adopt it. Adoption requires the reviewed project version to remain current and the reviewer to remain authorised. A changed scope can require a new review.

Adoption means recording that review as the current adopted finding in its domain. It does not mean every adopted verdict is “proceed”, and suggested actions do not automatically become tasks. The owner cannot review their own idea. Review material is private to its authorised audience; finance material may be shared through the separate consented capital process.

Learn from the community

• Comments: Add observations and questions, including replies to published comments.
• Ratings: Rate innovation, practicability, safety, learning value and local usefulness from 1 to 5, or choose “not rated” for a factor you cannot judge. Higher safety scores mean safer. At least one factor must have a numeric rating.
• Related ideas and duplicate claims: Explain a connection to another public idea. A duplicate claim is reviewed; it does not automatically merge projects.
• Existing market solutions: Describe an available solution and whether it fully or partly covers the need. An existing solution may still leave room for a useful local service or adaptation.
• Testimonials: Describe your relationship and experience with the result. Teammate and mentor claims need the matching relationship; the owner cannot testify for their own idea.
• Proof: Submit eligible supporting notes, links or files for review.
• Reports: Report privacy, unsafe material, abuse, spam, duplication or another supported concern. Follow your report in My Reports.

Ratings use one ballot per person per idea; changing your ballot updates it. Results show the median for each factor and the numeric/not-rated counts, not a combined success score. A median can be based on a small number of ratings, so read the counts alongside it.

Contribution moderation is separate from idea publication. A moderator can publish, reject or hide eligible contributions. Reports go through a review process; submitting one does not instantly hide the target. Duplicate merging is restricted and creates a canonical link rather than silently transferring a developed team’s work into another project.

Optional capital referrals, with deliberate sharing

Idea Box can organise a referral to an eligible approved capital provider. The current provider type is an NBFC—an Indian non-banking financial company—and request amounts are in Indian rupees. This is a separate path from education-loan applications.

1. Obtain and adopt a current finance review. Drafting a request already needs that review, the amount, intended use of funds and resource gap.
2. Open the request when eligible. Opening requires an adult owner and a current, usable project and review.
3. Choose a provider and preview the information. A teaser contains a limited summary; detail includes more project, task, business and review context.
4. Give consent for the exact information shown. Sharing is specific to the selected provider and version of the preview. Opening a request does not broadcast the private workspace.
5. The platform presents and assigns the referral. Presentation needs teaser consent. Assignment requires detail consent. The provider can then accept an assigned referral, or reject or skip an eligible live referral.
6. Follow the outcome or end sharing. The owner can revoke consent or close/withdraw a request with the required reason. Relevant live referrals are withdrawn. Terminal provider records retain status rather than ongoing access to the shared project content.

Changing request information invalidates the previous sharing choices. A stale review, lost provider eligibility, project suspension or revoked consent can make content unavailable. Each access is checked again; earlier access is not a permanent entitlement.

Guardians and safety

A currently linked, eligible adult guardian can open Idea Box from the child’s Guardian Kids view. The guardian does not need to buy their own Idea Box membership for this child-specific oversight.

The view covers permitted project information and child-related activity, such as the child’s assigned tasks, authored experiments or proofs, and mentoring logs they attended. It is not unrestricted access to the whole team’s business records, private files or messages, and it does not let the guardian edit as the child.

A guardian can request a takedown review with a reason. The request becomes a report for an authorised moderator; it does not directly delete or suspend the idea. Messaging can also be disabled through guardian controls independently of Idea Box membership.

Renewal, changed circumstances and closure

When membership expires

Specifically retained own-project history becomes read-only, and supported personal histories and exit actions remain available under their own rules. Expiry does not keep all community browsing or another person’s private workspace open. Use the membership option to review the current fee and renew explicitly with purchased credits. Renewing restores eligible service actions, but does not recreate a removed team role or ended mentor assignment.

When your page is out of date

Another action can change the project while a form is open. If the app asks you to reload after a conflict, review the latest project state before trying again. Permission can also change because of role removal, revocation, expiry or suspension. A page opened earlier is not permission to keep using private information.

When the project ends

The owner can close a project as completed, stopped, an existing solution, or not feasible, with a note. Closing stops open recruitment and ends relevant live capital activity. An already approved publication can remain visible. There is no owner command to reopen a closed project, so check the decision before confirming.

Finding that an approach is unsuitable is still useful learning. Record what happened and why you changed direction, rather than making success claims the work does not support.

Common questions

Start with one problem you understand.

Describe it clearly, choose a small useful action and record what you learn. You can develop the project—and decide what support to involve—as the work becomes clearer.