Perspectives on Innovation

InnoCentive and Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) recently announced a partnership aimed at accelerating environmental innovation in business. The article below was written by Gwen Ruta, Vice President of Corporate Partnerships for EDF.  This article originally appeared as part of FastCompany’s Expert Bloggers series.

Imagine if you could tap the brainpower of proven innovators from around the globe to help your company create its next business breakthrough and enhance its environmental record. Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) announced today that it is teaming up with InnoCentive, a global leader in crowdsourced innovation, to help companies do just that through a new Eco-Challenge Series to accelerate green innovation in business.

Breakthrough ideas can–and often do–emerge from bringing a new and diverse perspective to a familiar problem. Having that “fresh set of eyes” is one way that EDF has been able to catalyze and spread environmental innovations like redesigned packaging with McDonald’s, hybrid trucks with FedEx, and next-generation solar technology with Walmart.

The folks at InnoCentive have taken this idea–that diversity of thought yields better outcomes–into the 21st century. Recognized as a global pioneer in Challenge Driven Innovation, InnoCentive’s web-based platform and methodology help organizations formulate their most intractable problems, and gives over 200,000 entrepreneurs, inventors and scientists around the world the chance to solve them. With the likes of Eli Lilly, NASA, Procter & Gamble, and The Rockefeller Foundation using the platform, it’s redefining the innovation process.

(more…)

Innovation Program Manager Christian Stevenson explains the basics of the Novel Molecule Challenge.

It is a fact that all corporate R&D labs will have some gaps in their molecular libraries. Their internal researchers try to fill in these gaps, but quickly find that synthesizing these compounds requires methods and materials not readily available in-house. But, more importantly, it also requires a lot of their time – filling in the called-for structures distracts internal researchers from testing their application hypotheses. And the irony is that the com¬pound needed could already exist – not in commercial catalogs but in small vials with hand-written labels and covered in scotch-tape. They are buried on shelves, in cabinets, and refrigerated storage areas all over the planet.

InnoCentive solves this problem. With the Novel Molecule Challenge we do all of the recruitment for you from within our global network of over 250,000 Solvers in more than 200 countries. University labs, custom synthesis houses and independent compound collectors are all included. Once you find a match, you pay only for the compounds that meet your needs.

Identify the Need: The first step in the process is to identify the gaps in your current collection and to develop a generic structure that describes the molecules you need. Keep in mind that the small reward for NMCs means that the general structure of the molecule should be known in the literature and/or relatively easily prepared without developing new chemistry. (For novel chemistry, try using our Theoretical or Reduction-to-Practice Challenge types.)

Post the Challenge: After working with me to define the structures you’re seeking, we engage two primary resources to find molecules for you. First, we immediately search our in-house database of libraries from our Solvers and other small chemical providers. Second, we post the Challenge to our website advertising your need. In addition to Solvers who have the compounds already in hand, some of our Solvers will offer to prepare molecules in their labs specifically in response to your Challenge.

In addition, you can choose to take advantage of our Fingerprinting technology, which masks the exact compound you need, but still provides enough information to determine whether it is the structure you seek. This protects you and the Solver, increases the number of unique molecules you can have access to, and keeps the IP transfer process clean.

Receive the Compounds: Following Challenge posting, InnoCentive works with you to evaluate the submissions (giving you a single file in SDF or Excel format with all the proposed structures) and track the status of Solvers’ submissions. You receive the compounds as well as characterization data and are allowed to confirm that data in your own lab. Once you’re satisfied the compounds are correct, InnoCentive pays out awards to the Solvers, then sends you a single invoice for all the compounds in the Challenge.

Mario Alejandro Rosato is the winner of the second  Economist-InnoCentive Challenge, The Capture of Atmospheric Carbon to Address Global Warming. He presented his winning plan at The Economist’s Ideas Economy: Intelligent Infrastructure Event on February 16-17 in New York, NY.

I was born in La Plata, Argentina in 1961, to a family of Italian nationals. I built my first thermal solar panel at the age of 16 and as undergraduate assistant collaborated with several department chairs. I obtained a scholarship on renewable energy in Italy in 1986 and graduated in electric, electronic and environmental engineering in 1988.  Just a year later, I became a Professor of Renewable Energies. My thesis on wind turbine design was published as a book in Spain in 1992, sponsored by the European Community.

In 1990 I relocated to Italy and worked for several companies, sometimes in business areas that had nothing to do with my professional background. Research on renewable energies was the first love of my life and you know, one always remembers the first love…

I finally founded Sustainable Technologies SL in 2009 and a friend told me about InnoCentive. I decided to try and since then, I have been awarded a prize sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation (Rain Harvesting in Kerala) and one of The Economist on The Capture of Atmospheric Carbon to Address Global Warming.  Two prizes out of five proposals submitted, in a tough competitive environment. Quite stimulating, don´t you think?

Apart from InnoCentive, I won some prizes from Caixa Manresa and Innovacat and am currently (Feb. 2011) in competition for the Entrepreneur XXI Prize in Spain.

The good thing with InnoCentive compared to other similar competitions of ideas is that the anonymous proposal system ensures full meritocracy. In InnoCentive, your ideas are worth what they represent and contain, regardless of where you obtained your diploma or your nationality or ethnic origins.  Also for companies, the system allows consistent savings in R&D costs and ensures “out of the box” thinking, finally independent from the “academic endogamy” of many organizations.

Definitely, I will keep competing. Welcome and good luck to all!

Coming off the heels of The Economist’s Ideas Economy: Human Potential conference in September 2010, the InnoCentive team once again joined The Economist in New York City, this time for a standing room only event focused on Intelligent Infrastructure. This event convened some of the world’s top minds for captivating discussions on energy, architecture, information, transportation, finance, and cities of the future.

The meeting was once again emceed by the charismatic Vijay Vaitheeswaran, global correspondent for The Economist. Among the notable speakers were our very own Dwayne Spradlin, president and CEO of InnoCentive, and our client Judith Rodin, president of The Rockefeller Foundation. Judith was kind enough to give a big shout out to InnoCentive during her segment (InnoCentive has partnered with the foundation on 10 challenges, attracting more than 5,500 Solvers and 500 solution submissions with an 80% success rate). (more…)

In light of The Economist-InnoCentive Carbon-Capture Challenge, it is interesting to see the various ways sustainable infrastructure can be incorporated into everyday lives. And if ideas for green living occur through crowdsourcing, then the world must surely be heading toward a more self-sustaining way of life. I came across this the article about a crowdsourced contest (for a prize of $70,000) where the participants were asked to design the layout of a “mere” 420 square foot apartment in New York City. The photographs seem to be out of a science fiction movie set in 2323, where everything converts into something else. (more…)