Perspectives on Innovation

I am very excited to share with you this video interview between InnoCentive CTO David Ritter and Bill Laberis, Editorial Director and Social Media Manager, Custom Solutions Group, IDG.  This discussion focuses on the important role that CIOs and other IT leaders should play in the implementation of a company’s innovation strategy.

In the interview, David talks about how investing in collaboration tools, social networks and idea management platforms is usually insufficient to truly improve innovation. Disjointed efforts usually elicit no tangible results, and often create information noise – indecipherable data – making it difficult to aggregate, rationalize and analyze. Instead he argues for a Challenge-driven innovation approach that will complement existing strategies and investments in social networking and collaboration.

This program is filled with insightful learnings, experiences and best practices that you can use right away! Have a look!

Elly Madrigal, Seeker Program Manager, compares InnoCentive@Work Challenges with InnoCentive.com Challenges.

InnoCentive has two complementary platforms built upon our Challenge-based Problem Solving Methodology – the original, online InnoCentive.com, and the SaaS platform, InnoCentive@Work, which brings Challenge driven innovation into the boundaries defined by your organization.

Choosing to post a Challenge on one platform as opposed to another is predicated upon certain factors. One goal of a Challenge posted internally on InnoCentive@Work is to not only develop a Solution that meets a strategic initiative of the organization, but to also create collaboration amongst a global network of employees. Because of this, the Challenge scope, duration, and confidentiality can vary significantly, and guidelines to create well-bounded @Work Challenges are often set in conjunction with the organization’s coaching team. These guidelines, though specific to each organization, do have fundamental similarities, such as:

Limited Scope: A Challenge should not require any individual Solver to invest more than 10 hours of scheduled work-time to make a valuable contribution.

Actionable: If successful, your Challenge deliverables should include actionable results that the Challenge owner and his/her colleagues can deploy or utilize in a way that creates value for the organization.

Specific: The question posted in a Challenge should be specific and focused enough that any single individual might have the necessary skills to make a valuable contribution. Challenges that require knowledge of multiple disciplines should be narrowed down and made more specific.

Supported: Challenges should focus on business areas that are supported by management and are actively funded areas of work.

Owned: The person who suggests a Challenge is typically the one who will be responsible for writing and posting it on InnoCentive@Work. Therefore, Challenges should have a clear owner who will also be able to take responsibility for owning and implementing the results. You should not be suggesting Challenges that neither you nor your close colleagues would own.

These guidelines conveniently spell out the word L.A.S.S.O. We recognize that not all Challenges will meet all of these guidelines, but we do strongly recommend that you develop your Challenges with this acronym in mind to yield the best results possible – bringing both collaboration and open innovation to your organization and solving those problems that matter today.

Prodigy is an add-on Challenge feature that allows Seekers to increase Solver engagement on their computational or data-oriented Challenges.  When using Prodigy on computational Challenges, Solvers are able to get instantaneous and quantitative feedback on how well their solution fulfills the Challenge’s objective and how their performance compares with other Solvers.

When should I use Prodigy?

• Crowdsource analysis of any dataset
• Identify the best result or find the best analytical method
• Improve the attractiveness of your Challenge and set clear performance benchmarks
• Business Applications:
  • Market segmentation
  • Optimized product recommendation engine
  • Business analytics and analytical method development.
• Biomedical Informatics Applications:
  • Dx and Rx biomarker discovery based on clinical data
  • New target identification
  • Toxicology modeling
  • Virtual drug library screens
• Apply the Prodigy on proprietary data after masking it, public data or synthetic data

Most computational Challenges involve the dissemination of data for use in analysis or modeling.  The Prodigy works by asking Solvers to use those data to build a model and compare it to a “gold standard” (i.e. known answer, also provided by the Seeker) so that the Solver can track their success against the standard.  Scores provided by the Prodigy are typically a correlation coefficient that quantifies the significance of the solution found.

How does it work, continued:

• Scoring with any reasonably computed method: r, r2, RMSE, etc. are supported.
• To prevent gaming, Solvers are limited on their daily submissions to 5.
• Submissions which are not statistically significant are not displayed on the leader’s table.

InnoCentive introduced this capability to give Solvers greater transparency into the process and allow them to gauge their own progress against the submissions made by other Solvers.  Think of this as a scoreboard of success and intelligence. Seekers will have the benefit of getting the best possible solution out of every participating Solver as Solvers refine and improve their solution.  As the Challenge progresses, it is typical that the maximum Prodigy score will increase steadily until the end of the Challenge.

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…)

Elly Madrigal, Client Operations Manager, introduces InnoCentive’s Challenge Process Guidebook

The Challenge Process Guidebook is a reference document that was created to help Seekers understand the actions and steps involved when posting and evaluating a Challenge on the InnoCentive Solver Network.

The Guidebook is divided in the following four parts:

1. Benefits of InnoCentive’s Challenge Process: Lists the key benefits (shared by some of our clients) of using the InnoCentive Challenge process towards problem solving over traditional techniques.

2. Challenge Types with brief descriptions: Describes each InnoCentive.com Challenge Type– Ideation, Theoretical, RTP and eRFP – including key differentiation points.

3. Challenge Process Steps: Describes each step that a Challenge Owner will experience when posting a Challenge. Those steps are:

a. Challenge Identification – brainstorming and completing the template.
b. Challenge Development – drafting and approving the Challenge Details and Requirements.
c. Challenge Posting & Solution Development – posting periods and InnoCentive’s initial evaluation of Solutions provided by our Solvers.
d. Solution Evaluation / Award / Transfer – evaluation periods and criteria for evaluating each Challenge type.

4. Challenge Closeout and Questionnaire: The handbook describes the final step in the process – Challenge Closeout. Here we present a sample survey that is conducted by InnoCentive to help capture any learnings and improvements that can be made to your organization’s innovation process.

We hope that this short guidebook will help your Challenge Owners understand the basic concepts of the InnoCentive Challenge Process, and like always, if you have any questions, general or specific to your account, please do not hesitate in contacting me.