Solvers, meet the Challenge Statistics module. It provides you with more feedback about participation levels in a Challenge and trends around submissions.

“More feedback” – that is one of the most common requests we have heard from Solvers. You have told us that you crave it. You want more feedback about, and insight into, the Challenges. You may want more information about a specific Challenge. You want feedback so you can make better decisions about where to spend your time. Your most frequent request (by far) is that you want feedback so you can learn and grow.

We want to give Solvers feedback. We want to do it in a way that provides you with valuable information and gives you a reason to stay engaged – either to revisit a particular Challenge, or to submit a solution to a different Challenge. And, we need to do it in a way that scales.

We are now beginning a controlled roll-out of the Challenge Statistics module. This compact widget (see snapshot) will appear alongside selected Challenges, and show three pieces of data about that Challenge:

• The volume of Solvers joining
• The trend of Solutions submitted
• The general location (country) of participants

This is just a first step. We plan on providing more feedback in different areas of the site, in ways that will satisfy your desire for it while doing it in a way that scales. We will be monitoring the participation in Challenges which have the module enabled to determine if it is encouraging or discouraging Solver participation, and to see how these Challenges compare to the average of similar Challenges. And you will see adjustments based on what we hear from you and what we learn.

The Challenge Statistics module contains sparklines representing the number of open project rooms and the number of solutions submitted to a Challenge for each day the Challenge has been open. The module also contains a map with markers in each country representing the volume of Solvers from that country who have opened a project room. In this initial release, there are no numbers on the sparklines nor on the map. Research from Harvard Business School suggests that as the number of participants and submitted solutions increases, the number of new participants in that Challenge will plateau. In other words, if you are considering joining but think that there is too much competition, there will be a tendency to shy away from participation because the chances of winning are slim. For this reason, the sparklines represent the trend of participation, but not an absolute number.

We will be monitoring participation closely, and are very interested in your feedback.

The engaging exercise, sponsored by Seek Company, InnoCentive, and digital agency R/GA, tasked supercharged teams of diverse thinkers and innovation leaders with generating big innovation process ideas that holistically address typical organizational barriers including culture, design, systems, and time. InnoCentive, who has spent over a decade perfecting the Challenge Driven Innovation methodology, coupled well with Seek, whose insight-driven approach begins with human behavioral understanding and empathetic engagement.

The result was a fresh, unique methodology that allowed participants to rapidly collaborate while maximizing the benefits of their varying backgrounds and experience. The process was brought to life in four sessions:

During the networking reception, InnoCentive sponsored a drink aptly named "Crowdsauce"

Step 1: Defining the challenge – Identifying key barriers to each innovation conundrum (culture, system, design, and time)

Step  2: Generating unique ideas – Ideating against each of the identified barriers

Step 3: Integrating solutions – Constructing total solutions that address all four barriers

Step 4: Evaluation – Submitting and presenting the solutions to a judging panel

Once the sessions were completed, an expert panel began evaluations focused on four criteria – winning solutions needed to be integrated, applicable, inspiring, and novel. Again the InnoCentive methodology, which defines specific success criteria up front, helped ensure that proposed solutions were relevant and actionable. The winning team presented a solution called “See It! Say It!,” a visionary mobile phone app that allows anyone in the organization to capture and share new innovation opportunities in real-time, including visuals such as pictures and video.

Straddling the line between power networking and collaborative workshop, this exercise was just the buzz that FEI 2013 needed. As has been the case for a decade, InnoCentive was thrilled to co-sponsor the event and share best practices. The benefit of unique collaboration was not exclusive to workshop participants, either. Coming out of the conference Seek, InnoCentive, and R/GA all learned from each other’s unique approaches, which will translate into producing even more meaningful results for their respective clients in 2013 and beyond.

Authored by Eric Seibold, Director of Innovation Expansion, InnoCentive

Thomson Reuters recently completed the “Ideation” phase of a two-part Challenge series. In January 2013, Thomson Reuters launched

Hello Ms. Rotenberg – great to have you back on the program, and congratulations on the successful “Ideation” phase of your two-part Challenge series. Were there any common threads or themes which connected the solution submissions, and what differentiated the winning solutions from the rest?

Thank you! Within the 177 solutions we received, there were a number of themes that emerged including: improved access to content through mobile and next-generation web-based UIs; data visualization and analysis; and, improved search relevancy and results presentation. The three winning solutions rose above the rest due to the level of details included, as well as how well they met our published success criteria.

If you’d like to learn more about the winning solutions, please view the interviews that Thomson Reuters conducted with the Solvers.

An important component of your first Challenge was to engage Thomson Reuters’ users – researchers, scientists, students, scholars, information professionals, etc. – in new and meaningful ways. What’s their reaction been?

As noted in my last Seeker Spotlight post, our primary focus is delivering tools and services that will delight our customers, as well as deliver them the content, metrics, and analysis required to make informed decisions. We received a high level of engagement for this Challenge, illustrating the fact that Web of Knowledge has a passionate customer base, with a creative vision of where the discovery experience for scholarly content should be heading over the next five years.

As a first time practitioner of InnoCentive Challenges, how would you describe your overall experience throughout the course of the first Challenge?

Participation in the first Challenge was a rewarding experience. We’re very happy with the level of interest the Ideation Challenge received. The Challenge Evaluation Team, representing a diverse group of Thomson Reuters colleagues across geographic locations, selected the winning solutions based on published selection criteria, including technical feasibility and global reach. We were all impressed with the breath and depth of the submissions and are evaluating how to incorporate some of these into our development roadmaps and plans.

As you look to the “Build” phase of your Challenge series with Expose Data Relationships Through Visualization of Thomson Reuters Web of Science Content, what are some of the key attributes you’d like to see (or not see) in a winning solution?

The “Build” phase focuses on one of the primary themes uncovered in the first Challenge: visualization of data relationships for advanced discovery. Scholarly research generates a large amount of content and data, but it can be difficult to navigate relationships amongst various artifacts (e.g., scholarly journal articles, datasets, presentations). With this Challenge, we are looking for creative solutions that will allow for data discovery, as well as the ability to “see the forest through the trees.” Solvers should be creative and develop solutions that will assist in the discovery of trends and relationships in the data, keeping in mind that combinations of relationships and sheer amount of data we have in our system can make this a difficult problem from both a visualization as well as a data processing perspective.

For this Challenge, we are interested in seeing solutions developed to visualize data relationships in Thomson Reuters Web of Science, the world’s leading citation database and the flagship content set available on the Web of Knowledge platform.

Looking beyond this new Challenge, what can you tell us about your plans to further apply and/or develop the winning solution(s)?

Given the excellent response to our Ideation Challenge, our expectation for the Build Challenge is that we will be able to engage the expertise of technologists in our community, regardless if they are already familiar with our solutions. We have assembled a team of technical experts to evaluate the solutions for the Build Challenge. In addition to selecting a winning submission, the team will look at how best to translate the submissions into product enhancements and features, thereby accelerating our product development process.

Thanks for your time Ms. Rotenberg. Do you have any specific advice or guidance for potential Seekers as they consider running their own Challenges?

Running a Challenge is a significant, but highly rewarding, time commitment. I would advise potential Seekers to think about open innovation as a great opportunity to leverage the collective mindshare that InnoCentive and its syndication partners provide access to. If you have a well-formed problem, chances are good that there is someone outside of your company (or traditional partners) who can assist you in getting closer to a solution. Give it a try!

Ready to Solve? Take the Challenge now!

The nonprofit

Hello Ms. Briggs – thank you for joining us today. Could you start by telling us a bit about the history, mission, and goals of ACC&D?

ACC&D’s mission is to expedite the successful introduction of methods to non-surgically sterilize dogs and cats, and to support the distribution and promotion of these products to humanely control cat and dog populations.

Sterilization has long been recognized as the most humane and effective way of managing reproduction in cats and dogs. We absolutely support traditional surgical sterilization, but we want to expand the “toolbox.” Relying only on surgery, we continue to have millions of homeless animals, overcrowded shelters, and avoidable suffering. Non-surgical sterilization and contraception options omit the need for skilled veterinary surgeons, a sterile surgical environment, recovery space, anesthesia, and incision monitoring. As a result, we expand options for lower-income communities, animal shelters, and free-roaming cat and dog populations. This has tremendous benefits for animal welfare, shelter resources, and even public health.

ACC&D was founded in 2000 as a program of Auburn University’s College of Veterinary Medicine. In 2006, we became an independent 501(c)(3) non-profit. We now have a small staff and a very engaged Board of Directors and Scientific Advisory Board. Board members and Scientific Advisors hail from leading animal welfare organizations, veterinary schools, and research institutions; they are a vital asset.

In 2008, ACC&D’s work was advanced when Found Animals Foundation launched the Michelson Prize & Grants in Reproductive Biology. This committed up to $75 million in research support and award money to develop a non-surgical sterilant that is safe, effective, and practical for use in male and female cats and dogs. Add to that the first FDA-approved non-surgical sterilant for male dogs (Zeuterin™), which is expected to be available commercially in the U.S. in mid-2013, and ACC&D’s mission and objectives have received a lot of attention in recent years! We’ll host our 5^th International Symposium June 20-22 in Portland, Oregon. We also just released a free e-book on fertility control in dogs and cats—the definitive reference guide to this growing field.

Can you help us understand more about the importance of humane cat and dog population control and how the issue has evolved over the past decade?

Geographic scope matters when answering this question. In the U.S. alone, an estimated 3-4 million animals are euthanized each year. Any unsterilized dog or cat is at risk of contributing to these numbers. Low-cost, high-quality, high-volume spay/neuter resources have expanded in the past decade, which has helped make surgical sterilization more affordable. Even so, this has not been able to keep millions of animals from ending up euthanized—an animal welfare issue to be sure, but also a social and economic burden for communities. Adding non-surgical options to the “toolbox” is vital to reducing numbers of homeless animals.

The situation in many other parts of the world is much more desperate. In dozens of nations, poverty is endemic. Limited veterinary and financial resources simply cannot support large-scale surgical sterilization for canine and feline population control. Municipal animal care and control systems are primitive or non-existent, and surplus animals are often killed by archaic methods such as drowning, electrocution, and poisoning.

Public health and rabies are also a consideration. In many countries free-roaming dogs are common. The World Health Organization estimates that over 55,000 people die of rabies annually, mostly in Asia and Africa; dogs are the source of the majority of human rabies deaths.

In recent decades, it has become widely accepted that “culling” does not permanently reduce canine populations or prevent rabies. Canine contraception and rabies vaccination are essential. In communities with limited resources, non-surgical options, particularly injectible ones, have the potential to vastly increase the numbers of dogs both sterilized and vaccinated against rabies. The result is improved animal and human health and welfare.

What prompted you to partner with InnoCentive and use crowdsourcing as part of your strategy rather than rely on traditional avenues of research such as grants?

I’ve discussed the tremendous potential of non-surgical sterilants, but our InnoCentive Challenge was actually about a related issue: how to identify animals who have been treated non-surgically, since the animals’ physical changes are often less apparent, and if the treatment temporarily contracepts rather than sterilizes an animal, he or she will need to be retreated. Keep in mind that we want the mark to be long-lasting or permanent, safe, humane, applied without anesthesia, and appropriate for free-roaming cat and dog populations who cannot relate their treatment history! Given that this question hasn’t been thoroughly considered before, we thought it was a great time to tap peoples’ creativity and intelligence through crowdsourcing and see what ideas emerged.

In May, ACC&D will hold a “Think Tank” on the subject of identifying non-surgically sterilized or contracepted dogs and cats; we’ll convene experts in veterinary medicine, animal handling, animal welfare, and technology. Two of our top InnoCentive Solvers will also attend; they’ll offer truly unique and valuable perspectives on this subject. Without InnoCentive, we would have never met these individuals or had the diversity of ideas to further evaluate.

I understand that you’re planning to recognize two first-place Solvers. What stood out about these Solvers and differentiated them from the others, and what can you tell us about your plans to further apply and develop the winning solutions?

Yes! As our committee reviewed Solvers’ proposals, several individuals offered good “short-term” possibilities—i.e., marking methods that utilize current resources and technology. Another cohort offered “longer-term” possibilities—ways to “push the ball forward” with RFID technology and smartphone capabilities and in turn advance our ability to mark, monitor, and manage cat and dog populations. Recognizing the value of both short- and longer-term solutions, we decided to award solutions in each category.

One of the first-place Solvers had an excellent proposal for refining ear markings. Traditional ear tags present challenges—they get caught, tear, are too large for cats and small dogs, can be painful to apply, and often cause infection. This Solver offered a fantastic proposal for an improved ear tag with analgesic, antibiotic, and antiseptic properties.

Our “longer-term” winner, Eugene Pancheri, offered incredibly thoughtful and well-researched information and suggestions on how to improve and adapt RFID technology to better suit our goals for monitoring and managing free-roaming populations. In fact, he and one of our runners-up will attend our Think Tank.  We look forward to developing a plan to test marking options as an outcome of this Think Tank.

Overall, how would you describe your first experience with crowdsourcing innovation problems via InnoCentive?

Overwhelmingly positive! Solvers were creative and provided great solutions and ideas that we’ll explore at our upcoming Think Tank and beyond. It’s also notable that Solvers were very collegial, complementing and building on one another’s ideas and seldom criticizing proposals that may have been off the mark. InnoCentive provided a great platform for crowdsourcing innovation, and we would readily work with the organization again.

Thanks for your time Ms. Briggs. Do you have any particular advice or guidance for our Solvers as they tackle future Challenges?

Please continue to be creative! This is one of the most valuable aspects of InnoCentive and crowdsourcing. Some of the proposed solutions were adaptations of existing methods of marking animals. Others were truly “outside the box,” and they’ve helped ACC&D think “outside the box” as a result. We also appreciated when Solvers engaged in dialogue with one another—in fact, bouncing ideas off one another led to some of the most valuable suggestions.

I am the founder of a social enterprise called Cardiac Health Across Zambia (CHAZ) and a post-doctorate cardiac research physiologist based at King’s College London.

I first heard of the Lion’s Den Challenge through a close friend, Dr. Jason Mellad, who won the competition in 2010. I since wanted to enter the competition but remained focused and dedicated to completing my degree. Besides, I had too much on my plate at the time juggling studies, work, and life balances as a mother. When I finished defending my PhD thesis in Cardiovascular Medicine in the Fall of 2012, I received a circulating email informing prospect applicants that the Challenge was running for 2012-13. My focus changed as I realised that the window of opportunity was narrow.

My experience with the InnoCentive team has been a very positive one from the time I first walked through the door. Despite my lack of business experience, I quickly felt at home. I was keen to win the prize, and therefore attended the associated seminars and contributed to group discussions. The seminars proved to be a great source of information regarding business awareness, the different stages involved in the competition, and identifying strong team players. I made use of the networking sessions by speaking to attending mentors, guest speakers, and previous winners. The team at InnoCentive followed up on my email enquiries regarding able mentors.

It was after attending team building seminars that I trusted my ‘gut instincts’ in finding prospective passionate team members to help develop my idea. Our highly specialised multi-disciplinary and culturally diverse team from Kings College London consisted of myself (an imaging specialist), Dr. Sitara Khan (a cardiac registrar), and Dr. Yiwen Liu (a cardiac scientist) – a team with skill sets that if partnered with the Zambian government would make an impact on people’s lives. We worked incredibly well together and were able to effectively focus on different areas of the business.

Our hard work was guided and supported by two great mentors, Mr. Zulfiqar Deo and Mr. Gerry Creedon, who were able to develop my initial idea. What started out as a vague idea for a clinic in Zambia grew to a plan for a social enterprise providing training for Zambians and students for the UK.

As a team, we worked hard alongside our mentors to draw up a business plan and submit our proposal, which to our delight made it to the semifinals. We had to work even harder to consolidate our idea into a six-minute pitch to present in front of the judging panel and the Lion’s Den team. Our hard work paid off and our team was awarded not one, but two prizes: Best Business Idea and Collegiality.

Winning the Lion’s Den Challenge has helped our enterprise secure seed funds to register our company and cover some of the legal costs. My experience with InnoCentive has no doubt enhanced my career path and confidence.

To all future entrants of the Lion’s Den Challenge or any competitions organised through InnoCentive, my advice would be: As Sir James Black said to me in 2008, “pick up those pebbles on the beach because if you don’t, someone else will.”