Perspectives on Innovation

By David Sample, Executive Vice President, Sales and Marketing, InnoCentive

I’m a road warrior.  I’ve spent a career expanding businesses to remote corners of the world and have been fortunate to discover innovation and intellectual curiosity in the most unexpected of places.  From the rain forests of Brazil to the deserts of Dubai, I’ve learned that we all share a need to solve problems.  We all want to make our worlds better.  And we all want to connect with others who challenge us.

This is why joining InnoCentive has been so fulfilling for me.  As Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing, I’m tasked with expanding our global footprint to increase the innovation capacity of organizations around the world.  This means not only ensuring that our Solver network comprises a diverse mix of individuals from as many different backgrounds as possible, but also providing problems for our Solvers to work on that reflect issues they may not have encountered before.

Over the past few months, we’ve been actively formalizing partnerships to help us extend our reach in strategic geographies.   In Q2, we selected Innovabia, an Arabian Advanced Systems company, to help us bring new Seekers onboard in the Middle East and North Africa. Innovabia is headquartered in Dubai, UAE, and Riyadh, KSA, and has a deep understanding of the business needs in this area. We participated in a formal kick off with our first corporate KSA client, SABIC at an Innovabia/AAS hosted reception and dinner in Riyadh.  InnoCentive CEO Dwayne Spradlin, pictured at the event, pledged a dual effort to expand the Solver and Seeker communities in the region.

Also in Q2, Innovia joined forces with InnoCentive as a partner in South America. Headquartered in Brazil, they will work to expand the Seeker and Solver presence in Argentina, Chile, and Brazil.  In Q3, InnoCentive helped kick off a new partnership in Colombia by participating in an Innovation Day, sponsored by our partner, Tecnova. Over 750 people attended the event and were very enthusiastic about the address given by InnoCentive’s VP of Government Jon Fredrickson. Tecnova will provide solutions throughout Colombia and Peru. (more…)

(Open Innovation)²

by Christian Stevenson, Innovation Program Manager, InnoCentive

In a unique implementation of our own methodology, we recently posted a Challenge in conjunction with one of our Seeker clients to use open innovation to improve the utility of open innovation. While we have sponsored Challenges on our own website in the past, this is the first time that we have turned the lens of our Solver community onto some of the key issues that we face in our daily business.  The Challenge asks Solvers to:

1. Quantitatively establish the benefits of open innovation, and

2. Provide key business decision-makers with better tools to track and implement open innovation within their business.

In addition to offering an award of $30,000 for a solution to this Challenge, both InnoCentive and our Seeker client would welcome collaborative work with winning Solver(s) to further refine and potentially implement their solution. For those interested in more information on this Challenge, the overview of the Challenge can be viewed here.

By Dwayne Spradlin, CEO, InnoCentive

I recently attended NASCAR Racing School as a birthday present from my family. And it was an incredible experience. In the midst of the searing Texas heat, I was given several hours of instruction on both the car and the rules of the road. Somehow, Texas Motor Speedway looks less daunting on television than when you’re sitting in an actual racing car. Did I call it a car? My mistake. It is a rocket engine with a steering wheel. And the banked areas of the track have a much more severe incline than you could imagine. I must say that even though I pride myself on being even keeled, my heart was pounding.

The highlight of the school is taking several laps around the track at whatever top speed you feel comfortable with. In reality, you follow an experienced driver, so when you are ready to go faster, you signal to the car in front of you by coming within a few yards of their car, which is the sign to accelerate – both terrifying and invigorating at 140 MPH (not actually sure why a headset isn’t a better idea).

I grew up learning to drive near Chicago and I assure you, I-94 is not sufficient coursework for being a NASCAR driver. Although it felt like an eternity, I was driving on the roadway for less than 30 minutes. My top speed? Just under 150 miles per hour, not even close to the speeds professionals must manage every day. This was the adrenaline rush of a lifetime!

Adrenaline or not, stepping on the gas was not a natural act. Every fiber of your being senses danger because, in your head, you know that man should not be going this fast. There was an ever present fear that something bad was right around the next bend. Self-preservation and fear of the unknown are hard to overcome because they are instinct. Professional drivers must have a certain skill set, including a level of fearlessness.

The same is true of change agents within organizations. They know that the organization conforms to a certain set of rules. The safety margins are built in and the performance of the vehicle is well understood. Standard operation procedures, culture and management systems ensure that; employees follow their “experienced drivers” to reach a desired destination at their comfortable speed. To go outside that comfort zone is to take an organization into new territory, to push the comfort level. Suggesting an organization can deliver higher performance levels is suggesting that current systems are inadequate. Pulling ahead puts you right in the sights of all the other cars on the track, signaling to all the spectators that those other cars are falling behind. And those other cars are not going to exit the track. They are going to fight to keep things just as they were. Although challenging the status quo within an organization may not feel life threatening, it may feel career threatening. (more…)

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.”)