Management Team

Craig Jones

Executive Chairman & Chairman of the Board

Craig currently serves as the Executive Chairman and Chairman of the Board at InnoCentive. He is a 28-year veteran of the venture capital and private equity industry and has invested extensively in over 50 innovative companies, including those in the healthcare IT, healthcare services, SaaS, and internet sectors. For the past three years, he has been angel investing in later stage secondary positions in companies such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and eHarmony.com. He is also on the Board of Directors of Construction Software Technologies, TC3 Health, and Chairman of the Board of eStudySite. Mr. Jones was recently on the Board of Advisors and the first institutional investor of HealthDataInsights (sold to HMS Holdings for $400 million).

Mr. Jones is also the founding Managing Partner of Ticonderoga Capital where he has overseen investments of over $300 million. Previously, he was a Managing Director at Dillon, Read & Co. and head of its venture capital partnership, a Vice President at Advent International, an associate at Centennial Ventures, and a consultant with Bain & Co. Mr. Jones is a graduate Magna Cum Laude of Harvard Law School. He has been active in local education and political issues including as founding Chairman of the Bullis Charter Elementary School and a member of his local City Council. Mr. Jones lives in the Bay Area with his wife and three children.

Alpheus Bingham

Founder and Member, Board of Directors

Dr. Bingham is a member of the Board and co-founder of InnoCentive, Inc. He has been a strong advocate of open innovation and founded InnoCentive, Inc., along with other ventures that create the advantages of open and networked organizational structures, including: YourEncore, Inc., Coalesix, Inc., Maaguzi, Inc., Indigo Biosystems, Seriosity, Chorus and Collaborative Drug Discovery, Inc.

He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Fast Track Systems, Inc., and Collaborative Drug Discovery, Inc.; the advisory boards of the Center for Collective Intelligence (MIT), Phase Forward, Inc., YourEncore, Inc. and Coalesix, Inc. and as a member of the board of trustees of the Bankinter Foundation in Madrid.

He has lectured extensively at both national and international events and serves as a Visiting Scholar at the National Center for Supercomputing Application at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. He is also the former chairman of the Board of Editors of the Research Technology Management Journal. Dr. Bingham was the recipient of the Economist's Fourth Annual Innovation Summit "Business Process Award" for InnoCentive. He was also named as one of Project Management Institute's "Power 50" leaders in October 2005.

Dr. Bingham had over 25 years of experience with Eli Lilly and Company in pharmaceutical research and development, research acquisitions and collaborations, portfolio management and R&D strategic planning. Among others, he held positions as Managing Director of the Mont-Saint-Guibert Development Centre, executive director of project and portfolio management, vice-president of sourcing innovation, vice-president of e.Lilly and vice-president of R&D strategy. During his career he was instrumental in creating and developing Eli Lilly's portfolio management process as well as establishing the divisions of Research Acquisitions, the Office of Alliance Management and e.Lilly, a unit for business innovation.

In April 2011, Alph co-authored with Dwayne Spradlin the groundbreaking book, The Open Innovation Marketplace, published by FT Press. Dr. Bingham received a B.S. in chemistry from Brigham Young University and a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Stanford University.

Read Alph's blog posts

Simon Schneider

Head of InnoCentive EMEA

Simon leads InnoCentive's operations in EMEA. He co-founded OmniCompete, a leading company focused on Grand Challenges, which was acquired by InnoCentive in January 2012. Under Simon's leadership, OmniCompete awarded over $2.9 million in prizes, which multiplied into $124 million in impact by prize finalists. Before completing his MBA at London Business School, Simon worked as a security consultant for IBM in New York, where he managed multi-million dollar technology projects in video surveillance, biometrics, and business continuity. Prior to working at IBM, Simon founded and led two venture-backed technology start-ups in Germany and the US. Simon sits on innovation advising committees for departments of the German and UK governments, and he also invented a patent that has been licensed to IBM. Simon contributes regularly to open innovation discussions in the media (e.g., New Scientist) and speaks regularly at conferences in Washington, London, and Brussels.

David Sample

Executive Vice President of Sales

David Sample is Executive Vice President of Sales of InnoCentive, Inc. Before joining InnoCentive, Sample was Chief Commercial Officer for Edutech, a leading provider of education solutions that enable academic institutions and corporate organizations to improve performance by facilitating 'knowledge enrichment and skills enhancement'. Prior to Edutech, Sample was with Blackboard where he served as senior vice president of global sales for three and a half years. During that time, Blackboard continued its rapid growth, made several strategic acquisitions, and expanded its international presence.

Sample has more than 25 years of sales and executive management experience at a variety of different enterprise software companies. He spent the bulk of his career at Hyperion Solutions Corporation, where he served as senior vice president for sales, leading both North American sales and international operations. During his tenure at Hyperion, annual revenue grew from $1 million to more than $250 million, and he built one of the premier sales forces in the software industry. Sample has roots in education - early in his career, he served for 7 years as a high school teacher, coach and administrator.

Jen-Ling Liu

Senior Vice President of Clients & Partners

Jen-Ling Liu leads InnoCentive’s Client Services and Operations team, responsible for fulfilling commitments to customers by delivering on InnoCentive’s portfolio of products, services, and solutions. Jen also spearheads InnoCentive’s strategic alliances efforts, responsible for the full lifecycle from strategy to pursuit, deal making, implementation, and expansion. Under her leadership, InnoCentive’s alliances ecosystem has expanded to include market leaders such as AARP Foundation, Booz Allen Hamilton, Environmental Defense Fund, Nature Publishing Group, Scientific American, and The Economist. Jen brings to InnoCentive strategic and execution expertise and P&L management experience in start-ups and new ventures honed at Fidelity Investments, Carlyle Group and Bain Capital-funded Imagitas, Kleiner Perkins and Amazon funded WineShopper.com, Broderbund Software, and Bain & Company. Among her track record are the commercial launch of a Fidelity Investment subsidiary, the launch of Encyclopedia Britannica’s first retail CD-ROM, and strategic alliances with New York Times Digital, Wine Spectator, American Express Publishing, and Culinary Institute of America. Jen holds a BA in Physics from Harvard University and a MA in History from University of California, Berkeley.

Richard Barletta

Vice President of Finance

Richard Barletta joined InnoCentive in May 2002. From May 2002 to April 2012, he served as the corporate controller and his primary responsibilities included growing a robust accounting operations function in addition to facilities and human resource management. In May 2012, Rich was appointed to the role of Vice President, Finance where he assumes oversight of human resources, facilities, legal, finance, and accounting operations. Prior to joining InnoCentive, Rich was employed in various positions by Arthur Andersen LLP, a national public accounting firm, most recently having served as audit manager in the Hi-Tech Practice of the firm’s Boston office, where he serviced both public and private companies with, among other things, M&A activities and several registration statement filings for initial public offerings. Rich received a B.S. in accounting from Northeastern University and obtained licensing as a certified public accountant.

Steve Bonadio

Vice President of Marketing

Since Janurary 2011, Steve Bonadio has led InnoCentive's global marketing and product marketing efforts. Prior to InnoCentive, he was vice president of product marketing for a leading cloud-based HR and talent management software provider. Steve also held a senior marketing position with Oracle where he managed product marketing for a large product portfolio consisting of Siebel, PeopleSoft, and E-Business Suite applications, and was vice president of research with META Group (acquired by Gartner), where he led the CRM research agenda and provided business and technology advice to Global 1,000 end-user organizations and software vendors. Steve received a degree in economics and business from Lafayette College.

Read Steve's blog posts

Mike Michaud

Vice President of Product Engineering

Mike Michaud is responsible for the Product Management, R&D, and IT Operations for InnoCentive, including driving the definition of InnoCentive product offerings, and the development and operation of the technology platform through which the products are delivered. Mike has over 30 years of experience in the software industry including 20 years managing all aspects of software development teams, including engineering, quality assurance, documentation, project and product management, and release engineering. Prior to joining InnoCentive, Mike served as Vice President of Engineering for several organizations, including Lionbridge, Availant (Vision Solutions) and CircleLending (Virgin Money). Earlier in his career, Mike had an extended stay at Lotus Development, contributing to Lotus 1-2-3 releases for over 11 years as an engineer, technical leader, and manager. Mike has also led teams at Platinum Technology (Computer Associates), and Scribe Software and has operated his own boutique consulting firm providing organizations with strategic guidance, engineering enhancements and leadership mentoring.

Jon Fredrickson

Vice President, Government Practice

Jon is a studied practitioner and skilled innovation executive focused on InnoCentive's efforts with the public sector and government. For nearly 30 years, he has lead teams in building new businesses and best practices within Fortune 100 companies and federal, state and local governments. Jon has worked with government teams across Europe, Asia, and North and South America in defining key innovation priorities and delivering superior results. Today, Jon leads a team of professionals at InnoCentive whose mission is to help governments identify and implement new strategies and solutions for using Open Innovation and InnoCentive’s exclusive methodology of Challenge Driven Innovation to optimize public spending and accelerate innovation into the government initiatives and programs.

Jon has been a frequent speaker at global innovation forums and has been a guest lecturer at The Open Innovation Global Forum in Korea, PDMA’s annual conferences, Siemens Open Innovation conference, MIT’s Sloan School of Management, The King’s College in London, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Minnesota Medical Devices Conference, International Integrated Oil Conference, and to other educational institutions studying innovation best practices.