Perspectives on Innovation

The days and weeks pass, and oil continues to blast upwards from the bottom of the Gulf. And as time marches on, we continue to receive submissions from you about how to stop the gushing oil and protect the coastline. Because of the importance and magnitude of this disaster, and because we want to keep you apprised of various InnoCentive activity around this Challenge, we are glad to share during the coming weeks the details of several key solutions and ideas we’ve received from you. Today’s post is a summary of a submission by Michael White.

Michael White, of Templeman Automation, proposes pneumatic barriers made of sintered rubber aeration tubing.  Such tubing is available for aquaculture applications at about $1/ft, making rapid deployment of long-baseline (>1000ft) pneumatic barriers cost-effective.  It can be made of recycled materials, and does not suffer reduced efficiency from salinity encountered by traditional bubblers.  Specifically, the strength, flexibility, and low drag of sintered bubblers make them well suited for towed applications in which a shipboard compressor provides air to a trailing bubbler system.  Such a mobile system has advantages in three depth regimes:

1. Surface – Towed bubbler arrays provide mobile platforms for “corralling” moving oil as more permanent barriers are devised; adapting to immediate ocean current and wind conditions.  Templeman Automation has tested aeration array systems with up to 1000cfm air flow at over 8 knots.
2. Mid-Water – The depth of the towed bubbler system can be adjusted such that oil suspended in the water column is above the array and thus entrained in the rising bubble plume.  Oil is thereby forced to the surface for remediation.
3. Sea Floor – Towed bubblers can be used to “suction” oil from the sea floor, providing a non-contact pressure gradient that is gentle to sea-floor habitats.  The small bubbles created by aeration tube systems transfer beneficial dissolved-oxygen to affected sea-floor ecosystems.

Michael White, Templeman Automation

By David Ritter, Chief Technology Officer, InnoCentive

To compete in today’s economy, companies must find ways to innovate faster with their current resources. Open innovation (OI) is no longer just an interesting new approach to experiment with – OI is an essential core capability for R&D intensive enterprises. If you rely on innovation to drive your business, and you’re not proficient in OI, you’re at a disadvantage – because many of your competitors are already leveraging the talent and insight available throughout the world.

To help enterprises build this critical capability, we are very excited with the launch of the third generation of our @Work enterprise platform, InnoCentive@Work 3. @Work is InnoCentive’s SaaS offering, bringing the InnoCentive.com Challenge methodology into the organization. It is a web-based suite of tools and services that helps companies utilize the diverse knowledge inside and outside of their organization by creating online communities and facilitating collaboration to solve important business challenges, regardless of where solutions are hiding. (more…)

I wanted to get a quick blog out today to share some big news: we have been working tirelessly for several months on redesigning our website – I’m pleased and excited to let you know our launch date is in sight, planned for later this summer!

The new site features improved flows, better and more content, and a complete new look & feel we think you’re going to love!

Solver Input: A couple weeks ago I sent an email to a large portion of our Solvers asking for help reviewing and testing aspects of the redesigned website and its content. We received more than two hundred responses within the first twenty-four hours.

Thank you to everyone who responded to the call!

With your input, we’re more excited than ever about the launch.

We’ll provide a more detailed summary of the changes as well as the launch date in a couple weeks.

Best,
JD

The days and weeks pass, and oil continues to blast upwards from the bottom of the Gulf. And as time marches on, we continue to receive submissions from you about how to stop the gushing oil and protect the coastline. Because of the importance and magnitude of this disaster, and because we want to keep you apprised of various InnoCentive activity around this Challenge, we are glad to share over the next several weeks the details of several key solutions and ideas we’ve received from you. Today’s post is a summary of a submission by Geoff Daly, who is a relatively new InnoCentive Solver.

This barrier solution is really an answer to Louisiana’s Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungessers request for protection of the Barrier Islands.

The floating Barge solution will protect the barrier Islands from being further contaminated by oils coming ashore. There are available between Baton Rouge and Slidell approximately thirty-two hundred and fifty river barges each at least hundred feet long. This number is more than sufficient to produce a barrier structure in front of all the Barrier Islands from nearly Dauphin Island extending west of Grand Island at a fixed position based on the 30-foot high tide mark. The barges—placed in a row nose-to-stern is nearly 73 miles long. And the barges are there now.

These resources can be immediately mobilized within hours, not days or months, and require no dredge and fill permits or forms from USACE.

Additionally, Saint-Gobain’s ChemFab division can fabricate the Teflon barrier material in continuous lengths (this material is used for huge roofing areas at airports and places UK Millennium Dome, and is rated for 250 MPH and 978 Lbs/in tensile.

We would solid-weld the barges together and anchor accordingly, then use skimmers cruising up and down to get the oil against the Teflon barrier all the way down 30 feet.

Hello everyone.

I wanted to give you all an update related to our efforts to assist BP with the Oil Spill situation in the Gulf of Mexico.

As you may recall, the most recent update was a contact and expression of interest from BP that was orchestrated by a combination of outreach from the White House, Anthea Stratigos at Outsell, our partner Nature, and general media exposure.  After weeks of no response from BP, this was indeed a major breakthrough and we thank everyone that made that possible.

Specifically, BP officials contacted InnoCentive on June 5^th with a positive tone and apparent eagerness to work together.  Their initial positioning was quite surprising, stating that there was no real opportunity to assist with the oil leak itself, “ …that the next 3 main projects are already in engineering and build for delivery in mid and late June.  It is unlikely that there is space for delivery of further innovations in that arena before the relief well is completed in August.”  After two months of attempting to stop the leak, they made clear that outside solutions will not have a role in stopping or slowing the leak.

That said, they also indicated that two areas that they termed “real time problems” existed that would be vital to the clean up phase: remote sensing of oil and better skimming technology.  After discussions on the morning of Sunday, June 6^th, our teams started working immediately as a top priority with BP in order to define very specific challenges to drive solutions to these problems out to our network and the rest of the world.  At the same time, we began indicating in the press that BP was responding to the need to engage outside resources in their process.  Later that week, we expected approval to post these challenges on our website.  Approval did not come and BP failed to return calls for several days.  When our contacts did respond, they indicated that were sent home for much needed R&R, but were now back and ready to engage.  Not deterred, we checked in with them nearly every day over the subsequent week or so until June 19^th when they wrote us that they would not be proceeding.

Why wouldn’t they proceed?  Particularly when these ‘real time problems” were identified by their own teams as priorities?  They said that “… the agreements BP would have to enter into with Innocentive are too complex and burdensome to add to already overstretched workdays.”  These agreements are simple, allow us to use BP’s name without InnoCentive taking on liability, and set the price of engagement at $0.  Overstretched workdays?  Really?

My faith in BP was already stretched, now it is gone.  The teams at BP lack an urgency to involve the outside world.  They appear to actually believe they have this crisis well in hand while putting forth that stoic, concerned face we’re all now use to seeing – working around the clock and doing everything humanly possible .  BP is not the victim here.  A catastrophic leadership failure, driven by a closed and arrogant culture.  This does not bode well for the Gulf.

You, we and many others have attempted to help in this crisis situation.  It is clear BP cannot be trusted to make the right decisions here, further intervention will be necessary.  We are currently assessing the next steps on our end, but I wanted to make sure you all had the most recent updates.

Your assistance has been invaluable, but we are not yet done.  We may need to tap you for further ideas if we are all to make a difference here.  Thank you for your help to date and in advance.  We are not going quietly into the night on this one, not with what’s at stake in the Gulf.

Best regards,

Dwayne