Perspectives on Innovation

Oil Spills.  Hurricanes.  Tsunamis.  Natural and man-made disasters are, by their nature, devastating and unpredictable.  But our response to them shouldn’t be.

If we’ve learned anything from the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, it’s that great ideas aren’t enough to solve a catastrophic problem.  There must be a fast and efficient way to collect, vet, manage and mobilize solutions, personnel and the resources to solve the problem.  This is why we’ve created the Emergency Response 2.0 Pavilion – to provide a place for Solvers to apply their unique expertise when cataclysmic events occur.  This  pavilion is our commitment that if and when a disaster does occur, we’re ready to engage the best minds in the world to provide solutions, and to get those solutions to the people who can put them into action.

We’ll be adding functionality to this space over time, including news feeds and other resources, but for now, we’re using the Pavilion simply to house Challenges that need to be solved immediately.  For more information about specific crises, and to get the latest updates from agencies on the ground in disaster affected areas, click on the following links  -

Red Cross – http://www.redcross.org/

Deepwater Horizon Response Home Page – http://www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com

Crisis Commons – http://crisiscommons.org/

United States Environmental Protection Agency – http://www.epa.gov/

InnoCentive’s stand on the need for Emergency Response 2.0 – http://blog.innocentive.com/?s=emergency+response&x=21&y=13

We recently announced our collaboration with The Economist’s Ideas Economy event series to launch the Economist-InnoCentive Challenge on 21st Century Cyber-Schools. InnoCentive is very excited about this partnership.  The Economist is  trying to solve some of the big problems plaguing mankind – which is exactly what we’re doing.  We do it through our global network of Solvers and they are doing it through their Ideas Economy Event series and the reach they have with their subscribers.  Both audiences contain some of the world’s most intelligent, highly engaged thinkers who are motivated to make a difference.  Given both audiences, along with our expertise in the process of Challenge based innovation, it makes perfect sense for us to join forces.

We asked InnoCentive CEO Dwayne Spradlin to provide his thoughts on this Challenge, and explain some of the benefits that we expect to see from this partnership:

Hi Dwayne – thanks for talking to us about the InnoCentive-Economist Partnership and the Cyber-Schools Challenge.

Absolutely – glad to have the opportunity.

What was inspiration for this particular Challenge?

The idea for this actual Challenge and for future Challenges will be driven by the theme of each of the Ideas Economy events.  These are all themes that we feel strongly about addressing.  The first key conference theme is Human Potential.  At the event, participants will discuss and debate how to boost human productivity by harnessing the potential of individuals and societies.  The Challenge addresses this via expanding education to people who are currently not able to access it. The Challenge winner will touch upon global education best practices, free market solutions to education, the testing dilemma, and how online learning will transform our schools.

In addition, we believe that this  is a Challenge that just about every attendee of the upcoming Economist Conference has both a stake in solving and something to offer. We have all been students at one time or another – so we all can relate to the Challenge from our own perspective. (more…)

It has been nearly 3 weeks since the Emergency Response 2.0 Oil Spill Challenge was posted on the InnoCentive Marketplace and the response has been tremendous. More than one thousand project rooms have been opened, and the submissions have totaled in the hundreds.

There has been a lot of media coverage around the solutions we’ve received, many of which are workable and can be tested and implemented in a timely manner.  Below are some highlights from the last few weeks:

Early this week, The Weather Channel’s Al Roker interviewed CEO Dwayne Spradlin about how InnoCentive Solvers have taken up the challenge to solve the oil spill problems and to discuss a “what’s next” step.

InnoCentive’s Mike Albarelli was asked by Slate.com to comment on suggestions for stopping the oil spill submitted by their readers.

The Street suggested that BP may be “letting the best solutions slip by,” citing two specific solutions submitted by InnoCentive Solvers.

A couple of weeks ago Ira Flatow, host of NPR’s live radio show “Talk of the Nation: Science Friday” invited Dwayne Spradlin (as well as Dot Earth blogger Andrew Revkin and UC Berkeley professor Robert Bea) for a lively discussion around the ideas submitted to InnoCentive, the need for a crowdsourcing capability to increase the effectiveness of response efforts, and general preventative measures around oil spills and other disasters such as Hurricane Katrina.

Our Solvers have “answered the call,” sending in proposals to “cover and collect” the leak that ranged from explosives, various containment methods using metal or liquid nitrogen and “natural” barriers designed using sand and reefs. We received schematics, plans, drawings and sample materials and directions on how to use them. Interestingly, we even received ideas similar to BP’s containment dome that was to be deployed three weeks ago. InnoCentive has gathered the best and most promising solutions and we are ready to send the best solutions to BP for review.  We’d like to extend a big thank you to our Solvers for stepping up to help with this catastrophic event.

Greetings, InnoCentive Solvers! Let me introduce myself:

I’m John Dila and I joined InnoCentive two weeks ago as Vice President, Solver Community. This is a brand new role at InnoCentive, and with it we plan to focus completely on YOU—your insights, your needs, your growth, and your success!

Today, I want to do two things: first, focus on you; and second, provide you with some insights about me, as well as some early thoughts about the possibilities for this year.
(more…)

Sandip Bharate is one of the 2009 Top Solvers. One of his 2009 winning Challeges was the Olefin to Ketone Challenge.

I am a pharmacist by profession. My training was in synthetic organic chemistry and my present interests are in natural products and medicinal chemistry, more specifically in discovery of small molecules active against different biological targets. I obtained Bachelors (2001) and Masters Degree (2002) in Pharmacy from University of Pune and NIPER, India respectively. After completion of Masters, I worked in the discovery research unit of Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, Hyderabad, for six months before commencing my PhD, which I completed under the supervision of Dr. Inder Pal Singh at NIPER (India) in January 2007. Subsequently, I worked as a Research Scientist in the Department of Medicinal Chemistry, Piramal Life Sciences Ltd, Mumbai, for 16 months. Since May 2008, I am working as a Postdoctoral Scientist at The University of Montana, Missoula, USA.

I am a workaholic person, love working in the lab, writing research papers and staying in touch with recent happenings in new drug discovery. I have been actively involved in Medicinal Chemistry research since last 8 years. It is an interdisciplinary research area incorporating synthetic organic chemistry, biochemistry, pharmacology, molecular biology and pharmaceutical chemistry in the search for better drugs. In fact, as the discipline has grown, it has embraced several other disciplines. And this is not the end; it is constantly evolving and rapidly expanding its domain. I am proud to be a part of this fraternity where research holds an important key in fulfilling the needs of the society and in helping people live healthier lives. It was during my undergraduate course in Pharmacy when I developed a keen interest in the field of Medicinal Chemistry and I have constantly nurtured it during my Master’s and PhD programs and professional experience.

‘InnoCentive’ is a very innovative way for companies and scientists and ideas to come together. First time I came to know about ‘InnoCentive’ was from my colleague (sometime in 2007). I became curious about it and went to the website homepage to know more about ‘InnoCentive’. I found it very exciting, and realized that this is a great chance to win a reward if my proposal will be chosen by a seeker company. I liked the concept of InnoCentive very much and was excited to submit a solution to atleast a one challenge to test my competence. I found this as a great chance to show my competence, work with my brain without limitations and the possibility to compete with others to find the best solution. Immediately, I got registered as a Solver. During initial two years after joining InnoCentive, I was regularly visiting ‘InnoCentive’ website but never made any attempt to solve any challenge until the start of 2009. I started submitting solutions in 2009, which became an exciting year for me. I won three Challenges and gained recognition as one of the Top Solvers by InnoCentive. My first attempt to solve a Challenge (Cooling compounds) was in February 2009, and it was the perfect challenge for me to start my contribution to InnoCentive.. I was pretty confident about winning this challenge after reading challenge details. Fortunately my first contribution was successful as my proposed solution was selected for the award.

My curiosity and interest in drug discovery led me to actively participate and win another Challenge (Lupus drug development) in the same year (2009) even though I knew very little about the disease ‘Lupus’. The Challenge details seemed attractive because of its clear and specific project criteria. Through this challenge, I was also very much excited to know in detail about the deadly autoimmune disease ‘Lupus’ and further understand hurdles involved in discovering new drug(s) for its treatment. For this challenge, I spent a couple of my weekends to understand the reasons why there were a large number of failures and only few successes in lupus clinical trials. Writing a proposal for this challenge was a challenging job but I found it very interesting. Subsequently, I made a couple of more successful solutions: Olefin to ketone; and Medicinal chemistry leads for crop protection.

‘InnoCentive’ is really a good forum for industries to post their problems, opening them to the whole world and thereby making a brain-storming exercise for researchers to think on these problems in a novel way. Most of the time, I found that, on my first quick look on the posted challenge, several of the problems seem to be simple, but after looking at the challenge details, I realized its complexity. Since this forum is highly competitive, there is always a risk involved in solving challenges but it is a great exercise to the brain and a good reason to know better about that particular research area. Working as a Solver with ‘InnoCentive’ is an opportunity to help change the future of innovation, and in turn create more opportunities for ourselves. I am happy to be a part of this community and look forward to solve more challenges in future.