Is this a good equation for deciding whether or not to begin a creative project? Details inside?

That is an intriguing equation. Basically it's weighing up the time and money you spend on the project against the number of people that get pleasure from it, and the length of time that they get pleasure for. This has to be for projects that you do just for fun!

Since it makes no allowance for making any money back, if you followed that formula on projects you do for a living, you'd likely go broke. :) We don't know what the units are. If the time units are in hours, then $100 is considered to be equivalent to 15 hours of effort on your part, and likewise to 15 person-hours of enjoyment on the viewers part.

If the units are minutes then $100 is considered the equivalent of 15 minutes of effort. If $100 is worth 15 min of time, you're valuing your free time at $400 an hour. For most of us that is rather a lot!(Free time cos as I said using this equation on projects that you need to make money from will make you broke!

) On the other hand if $100 is worth 15 hours, you are valuing your free time at $6.67 an hour. I guess you need to decide if that is a fair valuation of your free time. I guess a lot of us spend time on Mahalo for less than that, so you could argue it's not unreasonable.

However mentioning Mahalo brings up another point... This equation assumes that the time you spend on your project is a negative thing. It assumes that you don't derive pleasure from the activity itself. Which is unlikely for something that you do in your free time at your own expense.

So if you actually enjoy doing this thing, then the equation changes rather radically. Ok, I'm gonna make up a new equation on the fly, thinking aloud as I go... On the plus side are the hours of enjoyment that you and others derive, and on the minus is the expense you will incur in doing this project. Let's not assume that one hour of enjoyment on your part is worth exactly the same as one person-hour of enjoyment by others.

We'll use k to mean some factor that represent the ratio between enjoyment by you versus enjoyment by your viewers. If k = 1, you value their enjoyment the same as yours. If k = 2, you value their enjoyment twice as much as yours.

If k = 0.1, you value their enjoyment only a tenth as much as your own. So the positive terms will Tc + k * V * To. Now what about the expenses?

Well instead of thinking about what your time is worth, we're now considering what an hour of enjoyment is worth. Remember Tc is now a good thing, because we assume you enjoy doing these creative projects. Well let's call the amount you think is reasonable for an hour's enjoyment by the letter e.

If e = 2, you think an hour of enjoyment is worth $2. If e = 10, you think an hour of enjoyment of this kind is worth $10.To translate the expenses into hours or enjoyment, you have to divide by e. For example if the project costs $100 and you value enjoyment at $5 an hour, you must get $100 / 5 = 20 hours at least of enjoyment for it to be worthwhile.

So the overall equation now is.... W = Tc + (k * V * To) - (Ex / e). If W is positive then the enjoyment is worth the cost, otherwise it is not. By the way this is a highly altruistic equation.... Imagine if you said other people's enjoyment was worth a tenth of yours, and that your enjoyment was worth $2 an hour.

Well, what if a million people would enjoy your work? The conclusion from this equation is that you should go ahead and spend up to $200,000 dollars on the project, for no financial return whatsoever, but only the wonderful knowledge that a million people will derive an hour's enjoyment each from it! See the logic... a million people, an hour each, you value their enjoyment at a mere 20c per person per hour, and bingo $200k in expenses.

Yikes! :) But if we set k rather smaller, let's say we valued other people's enjoyment at only 2c per hour, now the figures aren't so ridiculous.... e.g. $40k to give 2m people pleasure for an hour each. I picked those numbers for a reason.It is the right ballpark for the costs and viewers of the Lord of the Rings fan-film Born of Hope.

And some people do think it's worth splashing that kind of cash on their creative non-profit projects. Although, it has to be said... maybe they also thought that movie was a calling card for their work, and they might hope to get a career benefit as well. If you want to see the movie it's embedded in the Lord of the Rings page.

So there you are.... W = Tc + (k * V * To) - (Ex / e) Where maybe k = 0.01 and maybe e = 2, but you can tweak them both until you like the conclusions they give you. > Would you use this equation?Mmm... well.... maybe not.... :) I might pump some numbers in and see what it said. But really as we just saw, by changing the assumptions you can get the outcome to whatever you want.

I mean who knows at the beginning of a project just how much it will cost and just how many people will eventually enjoy it? It might help you by making you realize, "Gee with the kind of money I'm proposing to spend, I'd really want this to be seen by a thousand people. Will it really be that popular?

If only twenty people see it, will I feel that was worth it?" I suspect that people that do projects like Born of Hope don't weight up stuff like that. They probably just want to do something so badly that they go for it and are willing to spend their savings on it.

I really like @philipy's answer to the question, but will take a stab at it to see if I can provide a more comprehensive equation that will not necessarily only work for altruistic projects. W = -a*Tc - E + R + b*Tce + c*Toe*No Where: W: Worth of the project in $. A: Value of one hour of the creator's time (i.e.

$/hour). Tc: Time the creator spends on the project. E: Expenses to complete the project in $.

R: Revenue expected to be generated by project in $. B: Value the creator places on his/her enjoyment from the project ($/hour). Tce: Time the creator derives enjoyment from the project; This may be equal to Tc, less than Tc, or more than Tc (see below).

C: Value the creator places on the enjoyment others derive from the project ($/hour) Toe: The average number of hours of expected enjoyment per person other than the creator. No: The number of people other than the creator expected to enjoy the project. Let's see how this works in practice in several scenarios.

Scenario I - Creating a Hollywood movie for profit: a: Value of one hour of the creator's time (i.e. $/hour). Given the large number of people working on the project and the large variations in their hourly rates, let's put all those into the expenses instead so a=0.Tc: Time the creator spends on the project.

Set this to 0 for the reason above. E: Expenses to complete the project in $. For a fairly expensive movie this might be e.g. $100 million.

R: Revenue expected to be generated by project in $. For a fairly successful movie this might be e.g. $200 million. B: Value the creator places on his/her enjoyment from the project ($/hour).

Given that this is a professional endeavor, this is probably set at 0. Tce: Time the creator derives enjoyment from the project; This may be equal to Tc, less than Tc, or more than Tc (see below). Since be is set to 0, this becomes irrelevant.

C: Value the creator places on the enjoyment others derive from the project ($/hour). This is probably set to 0 as Hollywood does these things for profit and would not be willing to provide free entertainment at their own expense. Toe: The average number of hours of expected enjoyment per person other than the creator.

Irrelevant given c=0. No: The number of people other than the creator expected to enjoy the project. Irrelevant given c=0.

W = -$100,000,000 + $200,000,000 = $100,000,000 >> 0 thus, do it. Scenario II - Student project movie: a: Value of one hour of the creator's time (i.e. $/hour).

The "director" is a student, as are likely all the actors, videographers, etc. So this is probably set to 0. Tc: Time the creator spends on the project. With a=0 this is irrelevant.

E: Expenses to complete the project in $. Given the likely availability of university editing s/w and h/w, etc.This is likely 0. R: Revenue expected to be generated by project in $.

Probably 0. B: Value the creator places on his/her enjoyment from the project ($/hour). This might be rather high, but a student will not be able to afford very much, so set it to $1/hour.

Tce: Time the creator derives enjoyment from the project; This may be 100 hours for a typical project. C: Value the creator places on the enjoyment others derive from the project ($/hour). While the creator probably would want to place a high value here, s/he'd not be able to afford much, so set it to $0.01/hour.

Toe: The average number of hours of expected enjoyment per person other than the creator. This would be the length of the movie, which might be 1/6 hour (chosen to fit on Youtube). No: The number of people other than the creator expected to enjoy the project.

If this is placed on Youtube, the number may be 600,000 if the movie goes viral (chosen to make the numbers easy). W = $1/hour*100 hours + $0.01/hour*1/6 hour*600,000 = $1100 > 0 thus do it. Scenario III - Creating a marketing campaign for a non-profit: a: Value of one hour of the creator's time (i.e.

$/hour). For a professional this might be $100/hour. Tc: Time the creator spends on the project.

Let's guess this will be a month's work or 162 hours. E: Expenses to complete the project in $. Let's guess this might be $10,000.

R: Revenue expected to be generated by project in $. For a successful campaign this might bring in $100,000 in extra donations. B: Value the creator places on his/her enjoyment from the project ($/hour).

For a professional this might be half his usual hourly rate, so say $50/hour. Tce: Time the creator derives enjoyment from the project; Set this for the same length as the project takes - 162 hours. C: Value the creator places on the enjoyment others derive from the project ($/hour).

While the creator probably would want to place a high value here, this is partially a professional endeavor, so set it to $0.10/hour. Toe: The average number of hours of expected enjoyment per person other than the creator. This would be the length of the movie, which might be 1/120 hour (chosen to fit in a 30 second TV commercial).

No: The number of people other than the creator expected to enjoy the project. For a national campaign this might be 1,200,000 (chosen to make the numbers easy). W = -$100/hour*162 hours - $10,000 + $100,000 + $50/hour*162 + $0.10*1/120 hour*1,200,000 = $99,100 > 0 thus do it.

Etc.

It’s an interesting concept to propose that a right-brained creative person use a left-brain based formula to analyze their right-brain project. :-) Some factors to consider might be: PV (present value) or FV (future value) depending on how you approach the equation. If the project is going to take a long time and the expenses are incurred up front, then the value of the money invested for those expenses is actually not the same at the beginning as when W comes to fruition, and OC (opportunity cost).

If the creator wasn’t spending his time on this project, what else could he accomplish and what is the value of that? Also, RV (residual value) once the project is discarded do the discards have a disposal value? Mostly his formula is the beginnings of a feasibility study.

Here’s a link to a few sites that talk about taking your brother’s idea the next step. Of course, you could go off in the whole philosophical direction and wonder if some of the worlds most beautiful projects would never have happened if their value was quantified. I wonder what Aristotle or Michaelangelo would think?

DaVinci would probably love your ideas! It would be fun to debate. I like the math in your question and all the ways one could play with the concept.

I have to partially agree with subgman. The idea of basing the value or "worth" of a creative project on the audience and their expectations defeats the purpose of creativity. To be creative is to think outside the box, inspire your audience with something fresh and new.

Could Da Vinci have measured the worth or value of the Mona Lisa? While truly a creative piece of art, he was commissioned to paint it, but how many billions or trillions of hours have been spent viewing it? Focusing your creative aspirations within a confined set of existing beliefs and accepted behavior will ultimately diminish your creativity.

Your focus will be on the worth and value of your work in the eyes of others, rather than dedicating your time and effort into developing something truly creative that will turn heads and open eyes.

I don't know that time and money can be compared apples to apples, with one exception: In business, with salary or paid time. I used the same process, slightly modified, as the co-owner of a small business to determine if I'd purchase a product to sell. When you're buying hundreds of products, four containers full at $25,000 each, you have to know.

Any small retailer--and the big guys, too, use something like this formula: PR= = -RT - (LC-- SA - OH - AD -MI) Here's the key: PR = Profit RT = Retail price LC = Landed Cost, or your cost of item after freight, duty, etc--Lower than RT or you're giving it away. SA = the collective salaries associated with the time spent selling that item OH = Overhead (utils, insurance, etc) AD = cost to produce and run an a TV ad for the item (which has its own equation) MI = Misc. Expenses, like trip to factory in China, postage, unexpected things The only number that would be fixed is SA.

OH is to some extent. So you start to factor them out, because you know you'll have to pay them, and MI is so small or so infrequent that you factor it out, too. No way to gauge Customer Response to ad, .

Our advertising was spontaneous, and with two exceptions, we'd re-used old commercials. The talent was free--it was us, or for print ads one of us designed camera-ready copy. So AD doesn't get figured in, either Misc expenses were ""a cost of doing business."

Strain them out, too. So I'd be standing in a factory in China, looking at a piece of furniture, thinking this: PR = RE -LA The Profit, or benefit to the company, would be Retail Cost -Landed Cost. Then I'd start to work it backwards-for round numbers, let's say -the table is $100 standing in front of me at the factory in the middle of Guangzhou, China, but how much is its landed cost--the total I paid to get it to my store in The Midwest?(I used to tell customers that complained they'd seen it in China for $100 that for TV cabinets, etc. Don't fit into carry-on luggage, and that teaching furniture how to swim was expensive.

) Now lt's say you got a deal on the table--but its landed cost is $150. The question becomes where you set the price point so you can still run sales on the item and actually make a profit on it and not be left with it on your sales floor. For years.

There's also have no way to figure in customer tastes. We got asked for years for an item, bought a lot of them--n(ot expensive in the scheme of things, but big), and then no one wanted it. The bottom line is that starting a new project is a crap-shoot.

We opened a new type of store once with established competition moving into the area the same weekend. We invested in new signage, the product, TV advertising We couldn't keep the register moving fast enough. Four years later, that store was out of business.

The best calculator is your gut instinct as to how well, profitably,quickly, easily or a combo of all of those that you'll reach the end result.

An equation cannot be used for creative endeavors. Equations become useful when attempting to monetize the project. If you lack the passion to do it for free it will probably fail anyways.

If you pour your heart into it people will take notice and then you can start thinking about making money. My prescription for you is to read "Crush It! " by Gary Vaynerchuck.

Yikes! Let's just have fun here...... BTW...it was fun reading what you all wrote.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.