Perspectives on Innovation

Earlier this week we announced that Prize4Life had awarded 2 InnoCentive Solvers for their efforts toward finding a biomarker for ALS.  Prize4Life also announced that they would be reposting the Challenge in May, in honor of the organization’s third anniversary.  I asked Melanie Leitner, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer from Prize4Life to talk to us about this Challenge, the submissions they received and their hopes for relaunching the Challenge.

Thanks for talking with us today, Melanie.  Can you tell us why you decided to post this Challenge on InnoCentive’s Marketplace?  How optimistic were you that you would find a solution?

When we first developed the Biomarker Prize in 2006, we wanted a way to draw in a broad, diverse, and international pool of competing teams.  As a brand new, very small organization just establishing itself, we did not have the capacity to conduct the kind of marketing and outreach campaign necessary to reach the audience we were looking to attract. We were looking for a partner with established expertise and existing international networks in the open innovation domain. InnoCentive was an attractive partner for us, particularly given their large pool of international solvers.  We also saw that InnoCentive shared many of Prize4Life goals and values, including wanting to change the world (but being agnostic as to where these new world-changing solutions might come from) and especially being international in focus. We knew that posting a $1 million prize, the largest prize ever posted on InnoCentive, would benefit the great work that both organizations were doing.

When our Scientific Advisory Board first set a 2-year deadline for this prize, we knew it was very ambitious.  After all, it often takes 2 years just to get an NIH grant, and in the same period of time, we were asking researchers to come up with a novel idea, find funding, conduct a patient-based study (with all the regulatory hurdles that entails), and provide us with validated results.  Still, we needed to balance these realities with the realities of ALS: most patients die within 2-5 years of diagnosis, and there is currently only one FDA-approved ALS drug on the market, so the need for an ALS biomarker of disease progression was urgent. We knew we were setting a very high bar, but we also knew that if we handled this prize well, we could accelerate research on a very targeted issue.  Our Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) believed that even though we were setting a very high bar, there was a reasonable likelihood that it could be met in 2 years and given the urgency of the need it was worth taking the risk.

Your Challenge was to find a biomarker for ALS – why did you decide to pay an award if the Challenge hasn’t been solved?

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The blog post “Crowdsourcing the Craigslist Killer” by Edward Delaney appeared in my Google Alert for crowdsourcing this morning and the title sucked me in (nicely done, Edward).

The online outlets of the two major media publications in Boston, the Boston Globe’s boston.com and bostonherald.com are encouraging people to come forward and tell their stories about interactions they’ve had with accused “Craigslist killer” Philip Markoff.  Given the rising popularity of the iCitizen model of journalism, it’s not surprising that media outlets are now looking for sources in this way, hoping people will be motivated either by altruism or the possibility of “getting published”.

Out of 41 responses so far on the Herald’s site, only a handful offer anything more than criticism for the Herald itself for asking such a question.  Is it even possible that something substantive could come from this kind of outreach?  Does anyone care that his dad was your dentist?  Even worse, could this kind of unsubstantiated “testimony” (“the main reason why people didn’t like him is because he was so nasty to people…”) compromise Markoff’s ability to receive a fair trial?

With all of the recent news about the demise of traditional journalism, it makes sense that media outlets would need to start getting creative in order to survive, but is it a good idea to offer something like this up to anyone and everyone and present it as “news”?  It’s an interesting idea, but one that needs refinement in order to appear anything but sensationalist.  Of course, if it leads to more comments like this one, at least it has some entertainment value:

“I remember meeting Philip when we were competing in Miramar to see who was the best pilot. He was teamed up with Slider and he told me I could be his wingman. But then Goose got killed and I bailed out of the fight with the Russians but came back… No, wait – that wasn’t me… that was Top Gun. I don’t know Philip…”

InnoCentive was profiled in Business Week today in an article called “The Next Wave of Open Innovation: How InnoCentive aims to exploit sophisticated technology and networking capabilities to connect problems with their potential solvers”.  It’s a great piece that positions InnoCentive nicely at the forefront of open innovation.  I think the single most important message that comes across in the article – and they say it a few times – is the notion that organizations will find success in innovation by looking outside of their own organizations, primarily because it often takes people outside the core focus to present a solution. This left field aspect is something that we have found to be true again and again, both in independent research conducted by academics like Karim Lakhani, and in conversations with our Seekers, who continue to be surprised about where solutions to their Challenges are found.  There is no better example of this than that of Solver John Davis, who used his expertise in the concrete industry to solve a Challenge about removing oil from the bottom of the ocean.

I was also pleased to see the recognition of how valuable working in teams can be in solving complex problems.  More and more we’re finding out that Challenges are being solved by self-forming groups, which is why we’re working to create more community features for our Solvers.

It’s great to see open innovation hit the mainstream – and this kind of exposure is beneficial for all of the innovative companies that have given open innovation a place of prominence in their corporate strategy.

We recently announced that the Challenge posted by the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce to increase public transportation ridership had been solved.  I asked Lance Pressl, President of the Chamber, to give us a bit more information about the background of the Challenge, and the impact that he expects to see from its solution.

Hi Lance – thanks for speaking with us today.  Can you tell us why the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce decided to host this Challenge?

The Chicagoland Chamber has a long tradition of promoting public transportation in the region.  We believe that a robust transit system, moving people to and from their place of employment efficiently, safely, conveniently and in a manner that reduces the region’s carbon footprint is critical to the future success of the region in a very competitive, global marketplace.  Our members and their employees represent a significant portion of the customer base of Chicagoland’s public transit agencies.  As a key stakeholder, we decided to take the lead in posting the Challenge to demonstrate our commitment to collaboration and showcase the power of crowdsourcing on a real issue that affects all of the businesses and residents of the region

What appealed to you about posting your Challenge on the InnoCentive marketplace?

Posting a Challenge on InnoCentive offered a unique opportunity to tap into the unlimited resources and brainpower of over 170,000 minds from around the world on an issue of great significance to our members.  Gaining access to this pool of “Solvers” was a very exciting opportunity for the Chamber.  In addition, posting the Challenge on InnoCentive also afforded the Chamber the opportunity to demonstrate our commitment to solving the most perplexing problems through open innovation and collaboration.  Through our InnovateNow initiative (see www.innovatenow.us), we actively encourage organizations to use collaborative platforms and tools to meet their strategic objectives.  Posting the challenge on InnoCentive allowed us to showcase the value of crowdsourcing and demonstrate the importance of collaboration.

I understand that you received many solutions from around the world – was there anything that surprised you in the submissions you received?

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Imagine that you invited a contractor to your house and asked him to paint a wall in your dining room blue.  The contractor arrives, looks at the wall and says: “No way, you should paint it pink.”  He thinks for a moment and adds: “Actually, you don’t need this wall at all.  Tear it down!”  He then looks around and suggests: “Better yet, sell this house and buy a new one.”

Sounds strange, doesn’t it?  Well…a couple of months ago, I posted a Challenge for a Seeker who was making a product from Material A.  In order to improve the quality of this product, the Seeker wanted to replace Material A with another material.  A good number of proposals had been submitted in response.  Some Solvers argued that Material B could do the job; some Solvers pointed to Material C; some Solvers suggested taking a careful look at Material D.

But there was one Solver who claimed that there was no need to replace Material A in the first place, because the Seeker would be better off with throwing away his product and replacing it with the product that the Solver had proposed.  When I tried to argue that the Challenge was about a new material and not a new product, the Solver insisted that his solution was of “out-of-the-box” type.  The Solver has also politely intimated that, perhaps, the Seeker simply didn’t know “what he needs.”

I have to admit that this wasn’t the first time in my practice that Solvers implied that a Seeker didn’t know “what he needs.”  So, let me speak a few words in defense of our Seekers.    (more…)