Perspectives on Innovation

Hello Solvers,

We are currently doing a study with researchers at Erasmus University (Rotterdam, Netherlands) concerning open innovation and prize-based crowdsourcing. They have already conducted personal interviews with several Solvers and as a follow-up will be sending out a survey this week to a few thousand active Solvers. In the researcher’s words:

“We aim to understand your motivations, perceptions, thoughts, and how you solve Challenges.”

I just wanted to give you a heads-up that you might receive this survey in the coming days and mention a few things:

1. The survey is anonymous. It will mention a specific Challenge to which you submitted a solution, but the researchers will not know who you are or see your actual submission – they will just know that you submitted to that particular Challenge. Again, your responses will be treated anonymously and only be used for academic purposes and improving our services.
2. Any Solver who opted out of receiving emails from InnoCentive will not receive the Survey.
3. The survey is targeting “active” Solvers, that is, those that have submitted to several Challenges in recent history. Some will be award winners and some will not.
4. The survey should only take about 15 minutes of your time.

Not everyone will receive a survey, but please check your email (and spam-box) for the survey next week. We ask that you answer all questions as accurately and honestly as possible so that we can build your feedback and insights into our future Challenges and serve you better.

Thank you in advance!

Michael Albarelli
InnoCentive-Erasmus University Research Team

We recently posted a Challenge with the New York & New Jersey Minority Supplier Development Council (The Council) which seeks to identify innovative products and services that drive sustainability, create supply chain efficiencies, and benefit urban and rural communities and business owners. The Challenge offers Minority-Owned Business Enterprises and diverse organizations looking to highlight their innovation, build capacity, and develop supplier relationships with large publically traded corporations, as well as public sector agencies, an opportunity to gain local and national exposure and drive new business opportunities. We asked Kevin V.G. Wells, General Counsel and Director of Compliance for The Council, to chat with us about the Challenge.

Hi Kevin – we appreciate you taking the time to join us. Can you tell us more about The Council and its interest in promoting innovative products and services?

Absolutely. The Council has been proudly operating for close to 40 years. It links its minority supplier network, consisting of start-ups through companies with over $2 billion in revenue, to commercial contract opportunities. Our organization has three core functions: 1) Provide private-sector certification in New York and New Jersey for US entrepreneurs whose businesses are at least 51% Asian-American, African-American, Hispanic-American, Native-American or Pacific-Islander owned, operated, and controlled; 2) Facilitate contract opportunities for Council-certified suppliers with its Fortune 500 membership; and 3) Develop minority supply chains by cultivating innovation.

The Council focuses on minority supply chain development rather than minority business development. It channels diversity into the supply chains of its Fortune 500 corporate membership. These thrusts are geared toward businesses in the fields of science, technology, manufacturing, and environmental betterment. Today, if a diverse business does not address these areas, we strongly believe that it will fail.

How does this Challenge fit into your plans for your upcoming Sustainability Summit?

This Challenge is a vehicle to promote minority supply chain development and innovation within the emerging domestic market. It is also a funnel for all submitting Solvers to actively participate in our Sustainability Summit. Participants will have the opportunity to present their core competencies and to learn from the competencies of others. 

So it sounds as though the monetary prize for this Challenge, a total of $10,000, is only part of the incentive for Solvers to participate. Is that right?

That is correct. The Sustainability Summit will not only laud four winners of the Challenge, but it will also provide 40 semi-finalists the opportunity to showcase their innovative products or services. As part of this Summit, The Council is promoting an Innovation Arena. Fortune 500 companies, global business entities, venture capitalists, government representatives, environmental thought leaders, and small/medium businesses will have the chance to vet these semi-finalists as resources for their respective needs. The Sustainability Summit will take place at the Sentry Center in New York City on October 9, 2012.

The Council’s mission is to facilitate contract opportunities for Minority-Owned Business Enterprises (MBEs), yet the Challenge is open to all companies. Can you tell us a bit more about that decision?

If diversity drives innovation, our challenge pool must represent the best and brightest. Within that pool of Solvers, businesses representing the emerging domestic market will be highlighted. The Council has always encouraged its certified suppliers to create strategic partnerships, and we believe that this Challenge will facilitate that opportunity. 

You are seeking innovative and sustainable products and services that also bring benefits to urban and rural communities. Could you elaborate on the targeted community criteria, and also talk about US versus global markets? (more…)

Our daily lives are increasingly touched by the sharing of information online. In our personal lives, we update facebook via mobile, shop online, and use internet banking; we get to work and use email, online transfers, and share data. This is all making things easier for us, but it has also been making it easier (and more attractive) for exploitation of that data.

As we move further into a web-integrated way of running our lives, authentication becomes increasingly important. Better access control and information protection are crucial if we are to keep enjoying the latest technological developments.  

This is the compelling force behind our latest Challenge that we are running with IT solutions provider Emergent Consulting, who is looking for creative ideas in authentication through portable devices in the Emergent Authentication Challenge. These devices are increasingly being utilized for their features like touch screens and sensors, and easier software programming through things like apps, to provide innovative security solutions. Accordingly, there is huge potential for a lot of exciting ideas to come in authentication.

Along these lines, the Challenge is designed to attract innovative individuals and startups to show off what they are up to in this space. First off, there are no requests or claims on IP. Second, the Challenge is an open one: we’re seeking ideas from mobile phones, tablets, handheld consoles, RFID technology, NFC devices, smart cards, GPS – the list goes on. The competition is a great opportunity to showcase what you or your startup can do, whilst competing for a $10,000 prize!

If you are interested and want to learn more, check out the additional details on www.emergentchallenge.com, or contact us directly. 

This week, InnoCentive announced that is has become a General Services Administration (GSA) Schedule contractor. Essentially what this means is that it is now easier for U.S. federal government agencies to engage with InnoCentive to develop and launch Challenges.

As many of our Solvers know, we’ve done some pretty interesting work with the government. In January 2010, NASA’s Johnson Space Center launched an open innovation pavilion on InnoCentive.com. Of NASA’s initial seven Challenges – ranging from protecting astronauts and equipment in space from solar flares to keeping food fresh during long space missions – nearly 3,000 of our Solvers from around the world participated, and more than 350 solutions were proposed. NASA designated full or partial monetary awards for all seven Challenges, and the average time-to-solution for each of the Challenges was only four months.

I always liked this quote from Solver Yury Bodrov, who was rewarded for his submission to NASA’s Improved Food Packaging Challenge: “I was not sure I would be successful, but having NASA scientists evaluate my work was a primary motivation…It is a dream to be recognized by the scientific level of NASA quality.” 

More recently, in March 2011, InnoCentive and the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) announced a collaboration to advance innovation in military research. Through this partnership, the AFRL has successfully solved Challenges, including methods for dropping humanitarian aid without injury to people on the ground and stopping a fleeing vehicle without damaging the vehicle or the driver. The AFRL has since launched new Challenges, most recently Fast Rope Glove Device, currently open to the public and seeks innovative ways for military personnel to descend quickly from a helicopter in hostile situations.

Let’s face it: While we consider all of our Challenges to be important, there’s something cool about participating in NASA, AFRL, and other Challenges posted by government agencies. They spark our collective imaginations and enable us to truly reach for the stars. Stay tuned for other agencies to launch new Challenges on InnoCentive.com in the coming months.

We’re very proud to announce that our customer, Prize4Life, was recognized today as the winner in the Life Sciences category for the 2011 Spike Awards.

According to the sponsor of the awards, Kalypso, the “Spike Awards recognize the best use of social strategies, processes, and supporting technologies to improve innovation, product development, and product management…The Awards celebrate forward-thinking innovators that leverage Social Product Innovation across the product lifecycle, including open innovation, crowdsourcing, expert identification, collaboration platforms, social product development and sentiment analysis.”

Our customer, Prize4Life, is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the discovery of treatments and cures for ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. The organization was founded by Avi Kremer, a Harvard Business School student diagnosed with ALS at the age of twenty-nine. In 2006, Prize4Life partnered with InnoCentive to launch the $1 million ALS Biomarker Prize. This Grand Challenge focused on finding a biomarker to measure the progression of ALS in patients, thereby facilitating the cost effective development of treatments by pharmaceutical and biotech companies.

The multi-stage Grand Challenge was launched via InnoCentive.com in 2006 and made available to InnoCentive’s Global Solver Community (which today is a quarter-million strong and growing). In 2007, as part of the first two stages of the Challenge, Prize4Life awarded several ‘thought’ prizes to encourage promising concepts. Of particular note, a dermatologist with no prior ALS experience was recognized and rewarded for applying a skin-elasticity method used in the cosmetic industry. This is a prime example of the importance of diversity in solving problem (and in fact, two-thirds of the teams competing for the prize came from outside the traditional ALS field). In total, partial awards totaling $175,000 went to six groups. In 2009, the third stage of the $1 million Grand Challenge was posted to InnoCentive’s Global Solver Community. Two years later (early 2011), the full $1 million amount was awarded to Dr. Seward Rutkove, a neurologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, for his biomarker discovery.

Dr. Rutkove developed a non-invasive test that measures the flow of a small electrical current through muscle tissue. Electrical current travels differently through healthy and diseased tissue, and by comparing the size and speed of the current, Dr. Rutkove’s method can accurately measure the progression of ALS. While the Grand Challenge process culminated in the identification of a biomarker, the five-year multi-stage Challenge process inspired many new ideas from new thinkers, some of whom had no prior ALS experience. These ideas may yield future promise both inside and outside the field of ALS. In fact, KineMed, a biotech company that was awarded one of the thought prizes, proposed a biomarker that has potential utility in Parkinson’s disease research. Prize4Life connected the company to the Michael J. Fox Foundation, and they are currently working together to develop the technology. In total, nearly 3,000 Solvers and over 100 solutions from dozens of countries were proposed over the course of the Prize4Life Grand Challenge.

“Participating in the challenge helped to refine my thinking,” said Dr. Rutkove. “It led me to apply my technology research specifically to ALS focusing on both the animal studies and device development. In our case, participation has effectively sped the development of a handheld device to sensitively measure disease progression.”

A wonderful story, and some well-deserved recognition for Prize4Life. Congratulations!

(If you’re interested in learning more about Grand Challenges, register to download our latest white paper, “Solving The World’s Toughest Challenges in Grand Fashion.”)