Perspectives on Innovation

We recently posted a Challenge with Community Foundation of North Louisiana, to help them Create a Community of Successful Readers. We asked Paula Hickman, Executive Director for the Foundation, to talk to us a bit about this Challenge.

Hi Paula. Thanks for spending time with us today. This is a really interesting Challenge, with the potential to have a huge impact on both students and communities. Can you tell us a bit about your organization?

2011 actually marks the 50th anniversary of The Community Foundation of North Louisiana. Since 1961, we’ve acted as a public charity, strengthening the community in North Louisiana through philanthropy. To date, we’ve awarded nearly $40,000,000 in grants and scholarships – an astounding feat when you consider The Foundation was created with just $21,000. Fundamentally, our goal is to improve our community and the lives of those in it, and we do that through our generous donors and by convening nonprofit organizations and supporting their valuable and varying missions.

One of the goals of your Challenge is to increase graduation rates in Northern Louisiana. Why are you focusing on 3rd graders instead of high school or middle school students? (more…)

In May 2010 we announced our collaboration with The Economist’s Ideas Economy event series to launch The Economist-InnoCentive Challenge on 21st Century Cyber-Schools. Since then we’ve posted two more Challenges in The Economist-InnoCentive series: The Capture of Atmospheric Carbon to Address Global Warming Challenge and The Entrepreneurship Challenge. As a thank you, we would like to extend all Solvers a special registration rate at these two upcoming Economist’s events and invite you to join us!

Ideas Economy: Intelligent Infrastructure Event: Over the next 30 years the global population will nearly double, from 6 billion to almost 12 billion people. Every country in the world has massive infrastructure challenges ahead of it. The Intelligent Infrastructure Event will convene the world’s top minds for captivating discussions on energy, architecture, information, transportation, finance, and cities of the future. Together, we can find smart solutions.

Date and Location: February 16th and 17th, 2011 at Pace University, New York City.
Special Solver Discount Code: Register with code INNC and save $500 off the registration rate.

The Ideas Economy: Innovation Event will focus on entrepreneurship in a disruptive world. Participants at this event will examine how the very meaning of innovation is changing, and why it matters today more than ever. This summit will attract executives who believe in the power of innovation to transform our businesses, our lives, our futures, and our planet.

Date and Location: March 23rd and 24th, 2011 at the Haas School of Business, Berkeley, CA.
Special Solver Discount Code: Register with code INNC and save $500 off the registration rate.

Horace Lee is the winner of the JC virus or Polyomavirus Animal Model Challenge.

I am a research assistant working on viral innate immunity in HKU-Pasteur Research Centre at the University of Hong Kong. Before that, I was a master student in the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and my thesis was on animal neurodevelopment. I have a broad interest in science, no matter they are related to my current work or not. Reading books and journals is my favorite pastime simply because I love science.

I have always had a passion in innovation, especially with approaches that unravel the basic mechanisms of life. However, as a research assistant I had had little chance to innovate before I finally came across InnoCentive through an online advertisement last May. I was overwhelmed with joy to discover something I had been looking for all along. My winning challenge, JC virus or Polyomavirus animal model, is a lucrative and challenging project that immediately caught my eye. I decided to give it a try without hesitation. In the first few days of my involvement, I underwent a brand-new experience since I knew nothing about the virus before. Moreover, without any experience working with mouse infection models, I had to dig heavily into the literature and started with the basics. To my happy amazement, I won the first challenge that I attempted. Not only I received a decent amount of monetary award, I was excited to see my knowledge I acquired during the innovation process to be put into practice.

As an unestablished young scientist born and living in Hong Kong, I find InnoCentive a vibrant playground regardless of age, education and geographical location. Anyone can prove his/her ability once he/she has got a good idea. I would urge anyone who wants to recruit creative and innovative students to your graduate program to visit InnoCentive. I am now planning to apply for a PhD program in the United States.

by Christian Stevenson, Ph.D.
Innovation Program Manager, InnoCentive

As an organic chemist and Innovation Program Manager at InnoCentive, one of my favorite things to do is to work with our dynamic Solver community to help them solve our Seekers’ pressing problems. I recently had an opportunity to do that in a very direct way when we carried out two surveys of our Solvers. InnoCentive was seeking ways to make Solvers happier with our Novel Molecule Challenges (NMCs, Challenges in which Seekers desire delivery of small amounts of novel molecules for testing in their assays). We did this even though InnoCentive was already giving Solvers an opportunity to find potential uses for the compounds they already had (something we know you’re interested in, but that’s often difficult to do) and get rewarded for it in the process – for a total of over $350,000 in awards to date for NMCs alone.

In response to the survey results, here are the concerns that you, our Solvers, voiced, and what we at InnoCentive are now doing as a result:

1. Clarify the Intellectual Property (IP) implications of participating in NMCs. (more…)

Today’s post, contributed by InnoCentive Founder Alph Bingham, addresses the gaps in most molecular compound libraries, and the new ways InnoCentive is reaching out to Solvers to help close those gaps.

The very concept of molecular space is an intriguing one. But even after decades, it seems a rigorous (rigid?) standard has never developed for defining this space. Are the axes topological alone? Are they graph theoretical and limited to connectivity? Are they electronic? Do they include physical or chemical properties associated more with the nature of the substance than the behavior of a single molecule? Well, yes. All of the above, depending on application, assumptions and objectives.

But even without a rigorous set of definitions, the metaphor alone allows us to think carefully about the design of our experiments, the creation of our libraries (collections of molecules), the subsets we’ll screen and the way we’ll respond to hits and build out SARs (structure activity relationships). In a perfect world, our libraries are “smooth” not “lumpy.” They fill out molecular space evenly, not like swiss cheese with big holes. And the density is a factor under OUR control. We use low density compound collections when we must screen across vast territories and we use high density collections when prior screens and experiences have told us the regions of space wherein lie interesting possibilities. (more…)