Perspectives on Innovation

Earlier this month, Prize4Life announced the winners of the DREAM-Phil Bowen ALS Prediction Prize4Life Challenge, also known as the ALS Prediction Prize. Lilly Fang (and her partner Lester Mackey) is a member of one of the two first place winning teams. We recently posted a Seeker Spotlight featuring Prize4Life’s Neta Zach which dives into the background of the Challenge and final results. In this post, we’re happy to introduce Lilly Fang and learn about her experience with the Challenge.

I am a recent graduate of Stanford Law School and a new associate at Latham & Watkins in Silicon Valley. Prior to attending law school, I worked at an economic consulting firm in New York and received my bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Princeton.  

I first heard of InnoCentive through my boyfriend, Lester Mackey, who is now a postdoc in the statistics department at Stanford. Because I was slated to start work at the end of October, I was looking at a good three months of free time after my bar exam in July. Lester, who had been involved in this kind of competition before, suggested that we work on a machine learning Challenge together during this time.  

Among the Challenges we considered, the DREAM-Phil Bowen ALS Prediction Prize4Life Challenge stood out as one that seemed particularly meaningful and well-timed. We were excited by the potential of making a real contribution to the study of ALS (more commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease) through this Challenge. ALS causes progressive loss of motor function in patients and typically leads to death in about three years. Currently, there is no cure, and the causes are not well understood.

The task set out by the Challenge was to take patient data from the first three months of a clinical trial and use it to predict the rate of progression of the disease over the following nine months. One of the reasons that this Challenge had so much potential for new findings was that the data provided was a subset of the new Pooled Resource Open-Access ALS Clinical Trials (PRO-ACT) database, which is the largest ALS clinical trials database ever created. (more…)

Last week, we announced the winners of the Scalable System to Track Electronic Waste Challenge. This Challenge, run by EMC Corporation in partnership with Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and InnoCentive, sought solutions for tracking shipments of used electronic components and subsystems and ensuring that they are disposed of responsibly. Sumit Bhardwaj was one of the three winners of this Challenge.

My day job is to handle digital marketing for a large telecommunications company in London, but my evenings, weekends and other free time (such as my tube journeys) are spent either writing papers for my Ph.D. or working on finding solutions to intriguing problems. 

As someone who holds two postgraduate degrees in business administration and information technology and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. from the University of London, I am passionate about solving complex problems using technology. I strongly believe that everyday people can collaborate and create simple, easily implementable, cost effective, and scalable solutions.

I first heard about InnoCentive in 2010 from an entrepreneur friend at an alumni gathering. He described InnoCentive as “a global network to find solutions to the world’s problems.” It sounded intriguing enough so I signed up immediately and realized he was largely correct. In this day and age, where the extent of interaction on social networks is limited to liking some post or tweeting about it, there is InnoCentive, which connects people to real-world Challenges and gives them an opportunity to harness their critical thinking and contribute something meaningful.

I started participating actively as a Solver in 2011 and came across the “e-waste” Challenge which sought a scalable system to track electronic waste. Considering that there are about 500,000 tons of electronic waste in the U.S. alone, it’s clearly a huge problem. Moreover, sustainability is now considered a megatrend. The Challenge seemed both relevant and well timed, so I decided to participate and contribute what I could.

Having worked on RFID technology extensively as part of a previous research project some time back, I had a good idea of the technology’s capabilities. Hence, I decided to apply the same technology to find a solution for the problem at hand. I researched some of the most prevalent ways to destroy and track electronic waste, tried understanding the limitations of each method, and finally chose one that I believed had the most potential to be developed into a solution. I also studied some of the latest tracking technologies and evaluated the possibility of integrating them into my solution. The other factor I kept in mind was to ensure that the solution was economical so that it could be easy to implement and highly scalable. I submitted my solution and I am thrilled to be rewarded as one of the winning solutions. 

Previously, I participated in The Economist-InnoCentive Transparency Challenge. For that Challenge, which sought ideas for achieving transparency in government, I suggested a Facebook app that would collect data directly from citizens, enabling government to collaborate directly with citizens and attain creative solutions to various civil problems. My solution made it to the final screening, but the Challenge was ultimately won by Ben Skowera. I read about his solution and really liked his way of approaching the problem.

Thank you very much for reading and I wish all the best to everyone who is participating in InnoCentive Challenges.

Sumit lives in Southfields, London with his wife and enjoys going on long countryside walks.

Ben Skowera is the winner of The Economist-InnoCentive Transparency Challenge.

I am an Associate at SEI Investments in Oaks, Pennsylvania, where I’m currently working on the online software development team performing quality assurance and business analysis for our products. My past projects at SEI have also included web product strategy, international new service development, project management, and operational process improvement. I graduated from Lehigh University in 2009 with a B.S. in Industrial Engineering and a minor in Economics.

I first learned of InnoCentive through a news article about technology and innovation and I decided to sign up. Shortly after, I came across The Economist-InnoCentive Transparency Challenge in one of the site’s weekly Challenge Bulletins. The Challenge tasked Solvers with developing an innovative way to utilize technology to drive transparency in the government. With the upcoming presidential elections and the political turmoil occurring throughout much of the Middle East and North Africa, I thought this topic was both extremely relevant and important.

I believe having a basic knowledge of the government, political processes, and current political events is a very important part of anyone’s involvement in government and politics. After performing research into how people obtain information about their governments, I came to the conclusion that there wasn’t a sufficient way to truly understand the impact that political decisions have on us and our values and how well our elected officials are representing us over time. This is why I proposed my solution of creating a website that delivers personal and easy-to-understand, value-based political analysis by utilizing technologies and techniques used in online dating, social networking, and metric-based dashboard design.

As part of the award, I traveled to the Ideas Economy: Innovation 2012 event in Berkeley, California, where I was interviewed on stage by Matthew Bishop, US Business Editor and New York Bureau Chief of The Economist. The experience was incredible and so was the opportunity to meet and speak with some of the amazing people that attended the event. [editor note: to see Ben’s interview at the event, click on the link above]

By connecting organizations with problems to Solvers that reside outside of specific localities or the four walls of typical organization, I believe InnoCentive is creating a great opportunity for both people and organizations to take advantage of the tremendous knowledge the world has to offer. As more and more people connect due to the expansion of technology and the internet, I believe InnoCentive has developed a great way to bring together everyone’s ideas and create a global community to solve the world’s biggest problems.

I wish the best of luck to all future InnoCentive Solvers.

Mike Cirella recently won the Cleveland Clinic Challenge: Implantable Micro-sensor for Displacement & Mechanical Load. Previously, he received awards for three Challenges: Thresholds for Perception of Color Differences, Manufacturing of a Porous Film, and Task Light Charging.

Open innovation (OI) is a powerful platform that fosters creative thinking about problems that may be far outside a Solver’s daily routine. It provides an opportunity to apply diverse experiences that often lead to solutions never before considered. So often the ‘dumb’ questions are not asked by individuals studying problems from the perspective of someone inside an organization. The power of OI is much like a brainstorming session, where no question or suggested solution is off limits, thereby opening up the possibilities for a truly creative, even unique, solution.

It is precisely for these reasons that I am an active Solver. I have submitted many more proposed solutions than I have won, but each effort leads me down a new path and expands my knowledge for the next Challenge. The process allows me to ask “why not” instead of “why,” or worse, not ask at all since it is so far outside the normal approach.

For me, the common thread that links my winning solutions is the “Eureka moment” I experience after reading the Challenge description the first time and relate it to a past experience and solution to a problem in an entirely different field. Of course, many hours of research, organizing and fine-tuning my submission follows that moment, but the creative idea is formed by thinking laterally; searching my experience database for a tool or method that can be applied to a problem in a completely different area.

The Task Light Charging (aka Bogolight) Challenge sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation triggered my memory of how modern coin acceptors in vending machines function reliably in harsh environments by eliminating moving parts that wear and corrode. Since the task light required a rugged, off-grid method for re-charging its batteries that supplemented the existing photocell method, I applied wind and water power, converted to electricity via permanent magnets spinning past induction coils embedded in a plastic housing. No metal parts exposed and high inherent reliability.

The Manufacturing of a Porous Film Challenge had an obvious solution (to me) by applying methods used in the paper and plastics web production industries. Again, a past life experience at a company that manufactured polarizers for sunglasses prompted me to apply my knowledge of web rollers and controls and create a simple, inexpensive solution. Read the rest of this entry »

Subhabrata Sen and GVK Bioscience, the company where he works, have won five Novel Molecule Challenges in less than one year, and are currently working on four more.  The largest request he received was for over 100 compounds! Subhabrata became a Solver in 2009.

I’m an associate director specializing in parallel medicinal chemistry at GVK Bioscience, a contract research organization in Hyderabad, India. I was born in Kolkata, India, where I grew up very interested in science. My hobbies include painting (acrylic on canvas), reading, and collecting currencies of different countries.

GVK Bioscience is an extremely innovation-driven company, so we – particularly Dr. Balaram Patro, our senior vice president, and myself – were intrigued by InnoCentive’s Novel Molecule Challenges (NMC) program as another means of acquiring business for our company. The NMC program complemented our division’s core strength: combinatorial library design and synthesis of biologically active compounds. InnoCentive’s NMC program offers a new way of solving problems for companies by reaching out to an extensive audience of different backgrounds. At the end, innovation propagates and promotes the progress of our society and it’s very gratifying to be part of it.

Our library design and synthesis department designs and synthesize the compounds we upload for NMC challenges. Apart from initial guidelines from the Seeker, we utilize our in-house software to understand the synthetic feasibility of the molecules before uploading them to the InnoCentive platform. We also work toward novel routes for these compounds which can provide us access to a variety of molecules with new substituents pertaining to the scaffolds.

Being a son of a chemical engineer and a physics professor, I have followed my passion for science to the fullest. I obtained a Ph.D. in organic chemistry, mentored by Dr. Shon R Pulley, who first helped me realize the importance of innovation in science. I then had a fantastic opportunity to pursue post-doctoral studies with Dr. Albert I. Meyers at Colorado State University who truly expanded my scientific horizons. While working there, my belief in innovation strengthened all the more. I realized it was an integral aspect of science, and I began looking for applications of my scientific knowledge in industry. I developed my core competencies in combinatorial chemistry and natural product synthesis.

Following my post-doctoral studies, I have held a number of industrial positions. I initially joined Chemocentryx Inc., a biotech company located in the San Francisco Bay area in California.  After a couple of years and several patents, I returned to India in 2004. Since then I have worked for contract research organizations like Syngene, pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, and the chemical company, BASF-India.