Perspectives on Innovation

Thomson Reuters recently launched its first Challenge: Seeking Creative Use Cases for Thomson Reuters Web of Knowledge. This $10,000 Ideation Challenge – part one of a two-part Challenge series – seeks creative use cases for Web of Knowledge content, tools, and APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) that would enable users to engage in creative new behaviors, beyond what is currently possible with online research portals. Thomson Reuters Web of Knowledge is an online research platform that provides a single point of access to premier multidisciplinary content alongside emerging trends, subject specific content, and research data to provide a multifaceted view of scholarly outputs. We recently spoke with Ellen Rotenberg, Senior Manager of Product Innovation at Thomson Reuters, about this exciting Challenge. [Ed note: View Thomson Reuters’ announcement of the Challenge here, as well as a dedicated landing page which provides additional information about the Challenge].

Hello Mrs.  Rotenberg – thanks for joining us today. To start, could you tell us a bit about Thomson Reuters and share with us your key objectives for this Challenge?

Thank you for the opportunity! Thomson Reuters is the largest provider of intelligent information to businesses and professionals in the world. The content, tools, and services we deliver across the scientific and scholarly research community empower our customers and users to swiftly identify, evaluate, and promote the research that will continue to advance our world. We support the entire research lifecycle from the first stages of search and discovery through publishing and analysis.

For this Challenge, we are looking to engage the community to collaborate with us on the future of scholarly search and discovery. We realize information technology is changing rapidly and we’d like to ensure that the Web of Knowledge continues to better support and enable the world’s most innovative users.

What was your primary motivation for crowdsourcing this Challenge to InnoCentive’s Solvers (as opposed to using more “traditional” means to solicit ideas and solutions)?

First-hand interaction with our customers is paramount to delivering innovative solutions that enable them to achieve amazing results. In order to do this, we continually strive to maintain an open and transparent dialog with the global research community. Whether by recognizing exceptional research, or by providing support as our customers build new skills and expertise, we are committed to enabling their professional success. Participating in crowd-driven innovation, and posting Challenges on InnoCentive, is a natural evolution and a critical part of our community engagement and product development process.

How have you seen the needs of your users – researchers, scientists, students, scholars, information professionals, etc. – evolve over the years, and what are some of the key trends you’re observing in the area of online content search and discovery?

The dynamics of search and discovery are constantly changing, and there is little evidence that the pace of change is slowing down. Research tools and content have quite literally moved into the palms of our hands through the use of smartphones and tablets! Publishing models for scholarly content are shifting to reflect evolving user needs and government mandates for open access. And, the amount of content available is growing exponentially, so users need more sophisticated ways to separate what’s ‘good’ from ‘good enough.’ As you can imagine, we must be vigilant in monitoring and supporting emerging trends; one such example is discovery beyond traditional content to datasets, videos, and so on.

What are some of the key attributes that you’d like to see in a winning solution? (more…)

In collaboration with NASA, we launched the NASA Innovation Pavilion in late 2009. Seven Challenges were launched over the course of several months, in total attracting nearly 3,000 Solvers, 360 solution submissions, and all of the Challenges were awarded either fully or partially. Since this time, NASA has been and continues to leverage our InnoCentive@Work platform for promoting collaboration and problem solving internally within the agency. Today, we’re very pleased to announce that NASA’s Pavilion is once again back in action with two new Challenges for our Solvers to tackle. We recently spoke with Jenn Gustetic, Prizes and Challenges Program Executive for NASA, about the re-invigoration of the Pavilion and the new Challenges now posted online.

Hello Ms. Gustetic – thanks for joining us today. We’re thrilled that the Pavilion is back online with two (and we hope many, many more) Challenges now posted. What were your primary motivations for jumping “back in the saddle?”

Thanks for having me! We’re also thrilled that the Pavilion currently has two active Challenges on it, and we’re excited to see the innovative ideas that the public will provide.

I’m proud to say that NASA has been a leader in the Federal government’s use of prize competitions for quite some time. We’re an agency founded on solving tough problems and we believe in the power of open innovation to help address those problems in partnership with innovators from around the country and the world. The White House recently recognized this leadership in their 2012 Report to Congress on prize competitions: “From the Centennial Challenges Program, to the NASA Open Innovation Pavilion, to the NASA Tournament Lab, NASA leads the public sector in the breadth and depth of experience and experimentation with prizes and challenges.” So continuing our use of the Pavilion is consistent both with our problem solving philosophy and our leadership role in government.

NASA is on the cutting edge of adopting new processes, methods, and technologies to drive innovation. How does the use of open innovation Challenges to generate new ideas and solve important problems fit within the broader context of NASA’s overall innovation agenda?

At NASA, prizes complement our other traditional problem solving approaches to create a robust toolset of innovation and engagement approaches for use by a variety of programs. Open innovation, specifically through incentive prizes, offers many unique benefits that enhance our problem solving toolkit. Prize competitions allow NASA and other agencies to:

• Establish an ambitious goal without having to predict which team or approach is most likely to succeed
• Benefit from novel approaches without bearing high levels of risk
• Reach beyond the “usual suspects” to increase the number of minds tackling a problem
• Bring out-of-discipline perspectives to bear
• Increase cost-effectiveness to maximize the return on taxpayer dollars
• Enable us to pay only for success

The first new Challenge, Strain Measurement of Vectran and Kevlar Webbing, has been online for a few weeks now and closes on January 2, 2013. More than 300 Solvers have already signed up to participate. What are some of the key attributes you’d like to see in a winning solution? (more…)

Back in August 2012, we posted a very unique Brainstorm Challenge to crowdsource a diagnosis for a medical mystery. We were overwhelmed with the Solver response, with 1,565 Solvers engaging in the Challenge. Fast forward to November, and Mom’s Medical Mystery returns, this time seeking design plans for analyzing the responses of the first Challenge. At the midpoint of this second Challenge (which closes on December 13, 2012), we spoke with Simon Turkalj to hear more about how the Mom’s Medical Mystery sequel is progressing.

Hello Mr. Turkalj – Thanks for joining us again. What were some of the most important ideas that you took away from the first Challenge you launched?

There is an old saying in medicine, “When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras.” It’s a reference to thinking about probabilities when you encounter evidence – horses are more common, and therefore more likely, than zebras. 

This case has stumped specialists for more than two years now, so we did need to consider the unusual/unlikely causes, but without abandoning critical thinking. In this context, we had to learn how to balance our responses. We wanted to encourage out-of-the box thinking from the Solver community. We also wanted to involve our team of specialists in providing good technical responses to present a point/counterpoint (checking off the pros and cons of each theory) to deepen the Solver dialogue. 

The depth and breadth of the responses was encouraging. While we didn’t reach our goal of a single definitive diagnosis, our first Challenge generated an incredibly rich dataset of detailed and interesting commentary. It also inspired our second “sequel” Challenge. We knew that the next step was to crunch the data we currently have, before heading off in new directions.

What have been some of the most encouraging approaches discussed in this second Challenge so far?

Our sequel Challenge was framed in very specific terms: create a methodology for the next phase of our project with a detailed set of logically connected steps for the analysis of the data, clear descriptions of all inputs and the expected outcomes for each step, and examples or proof-of-concepts of the execution where feasible. 

With that in mind, we have found the most encouraging approaches to be the ones that fit those parameters. In particular, the postings that have presented analysis plans presented in terms of numbered tasks or phases. 

At the midway point of your second Challenge, how are you hoping Solvers can move their ideas forwards in the final few weeks?  (more…)

In July 2012, we launched a computational Challenge, The DREAM-Phil Bowen ALS Prediction Prize4Life Challenge, with Prize4Life to better predict the progression of disease in ALS patients. Earlier this month, Prize4Life announced the winners. The judging panel received an overwhelming response, with 1,073 Solvers having signed up, and submissions coming from around the world. Given the quality of the submissions, the judging panel doubled the original prize purse to $50,000. We’re very pleased to have Dr. Neta Zach, Scientific Director for Prize4Life, join us to discuss this Challenge. (Ed Note: Dr. Zach’s colleague, Dr. Melanie Leitner, was interviewed in July at the launch of the Challenge).

Hello Dr. Zach –  Could you take us back to the beginning and help us to understand what motivated you to run this Challenge, and in particular, why you opted for a computational “Big Data” Challenge?

Prize4Life’s mission is to accelerate the development of treatments and a cure for ALS. We have embraced the prize-for-breakthrough model in part because we are interested in attracting new and innovative ideas to ALS research. One area that we identified with great potential is quantitative analysis of ALS data. To that end, we developed the PRO-ACT (Pooled Resource Open-Access ALS Clinical Trials) database in collaboration with the Northeast ALS Consortium (NEALS) and the Neurological Clinical Research Institute at MGH, with funding from the ALS Therapy Alliance. PRO-ACT, which will be launched in early December, contains information from over 8,500 patients from past clinical trials, ten times more than had been previously available.

The DREAM-Phil Bowen ALS Prediction Prize4Life Challenge (a.k.a. ALS Prediction Prize) was a way to utilize, for the first time, the new and promising PRO-ACT database. Specifically, we wanted to use it in order to confront a basic puzzling question in ALS: most patients are like Lou Gehrig, with a rapidly progressing disease course. Some patients, however, turn out to be more like Stephen Hawking, where the disease progression is delayed. What separates the Lou Gehrigs from the Stephen Hawkings?  Understanding the variability of the disease can mean a lot for ALS patients going through diagnosis and can lead to a substantial reduction in the cost of clinical trials for ALS treatments. The unique approach of providing ALS “Big Data” to a global community of researchers speeds up the process while driving down the costs of discovery, which is good news for both the scientific and patient communities we serve.

Having run a couple of high-profile Challenges now, was there anything that particularly surprised you during the course of this Challenge?

We were happily surprised by the level of engagement this prize received. We had over a 1,000 registered Solvers. You can see the engagement in the quality of the winning solutions, but beyond that, the fact that so many Solvers – from 64 countries no less – were actively engaged on the forum and through emails, with over 300 forum messages and 1,500 emails, speaks to the success of this Challenge! Indeed, this engagement bore fruit – even the solutions that didn’t win were so valuable that we encouraged several of the Solvers to submit for publication in scientific journals to share their algorithms with the ALS community at large. This was our first large scale interaction with the quantitative community and we were thrilled by their hard work and devotion to the cause.

I understand that two teams secured first place, each winning $20,000, and a second place winner was awarded $10,000. In fact, the judges decided to double the size of the prize purse based on these submissions. What stood out about these submissions and differentiated them from the others? (more…)

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Nicaragua recently launched a Challenge seeking our Solver Community’s ideas for increasing demand among indigenous families in Nicaragua for birth registration services for children below the age of one year. We spoke with Natalia Adler, Chief of Social Policy at UNICEF Nicaragua, to find out more about this important humanitarian Challenge.

Hello Ms. Adler – thank you for joining us. Can you explain why birth registration is such an important issue, and the impact increased registration rates could have?

Birth registration is a human right. Everyone has a right to a name. However, only half of children under five are registered in developing countries. Without a birth certificate, a child often cannot access certain social services. They are more exposed to trafficking and other forms of exploitation. Later in life, they won’t be able to vote or open up businesses, affecting democracy and even hurting the economy, as informal businesses don’t pay taxes.

In Nicaragua, close to 20% of children don’t have birth certificates. In some municipalities, this number is closer to 65%. Children not registered cannot get a school diploma. It’s not easy to register an older child because registration is not free after the age of one. So, poor children may end up dropping out of school. When these children become parents, they won’t be able to register their children, creating a cycle of under-registration. So, increasing birth registration rates is not only a right in itself. It also helps prevent other rights from being violated.

What are some of the issues that led you to focus this Challenge on indigenous families in Nicaragua?

Indigenous and afro-descendent children are amongst the poorest and most vulnerable groups in Nicaragua. UNICEF Nicaragua is committed to leveling the playing field for all children by ensuring a good start in life. Plus, investing in early childhood is good economics. It’s about getting things ‘right’ from the start as opposed to fixing problems later.

We’re in the 21^st century, so why is the lack of birth registration still a problem for many countries? We decided to look at this problem by asking simple ‘why’ questions, starting with “why parents don’t register their children?” This is the Ishikawa method and it’s incredibly simple and useful. That’s how we decided to re-focus on demand, not just on the supply-side of birth registration services. I guess it’s a bit of private sector thinking. It’s not enough to have these public services available – it’s also necessary to ensure people want to use them.

What are some of the key factors you are looking for in an ideal solution from our Solvers? (more…)