Perspectives on Innovation

Lumina Foundation recently announced a series of Challenges and a dedicated Pavilion on InnoCentive.com to spur innovation in areas that would transform higher education in America. The Foundation’s first Challenge, Design of Student-centric Websites for Open-Enrollment Colleges and Institutions, is underway and will close on April 30. Two additional Challenges were recently launched and are currently available on Lumina Foundation’s Open Innovation Pavilion. We recently spoke with Juan (Kiko) Suarez, Vice President of Communications and Innovation at the Foundation, about this exciting initiative.

Hello Mr. Suarez – thanks very much for speaking with us. For those not familiar with Lumina Foundation, can you tell us a bit about your work?

Lumina Foundation is an independent, private foundation committed to increasing the proportion of Americans with high-quality degrees, certificates, and other credentials to 60% by 2025 (we call this Goal2025). Lumina’s outcomes-based approach focuses on helping to design and build an accessible, responsive, and accountable higher education system while fostering a national sense of urgency for action to achieve Goal2025.

The Challenges you are launching support the Foundation’s new Strategic Plan, which includes some big goals for higher education in this country. Can you tell us more about the problems you’re addressing and the goals you’ve set?

We are solely focused on helping the country reach Goal2025. This strategic plan covers the time frame between 2013 and 2016. Over the years, we found that Lumina must play four roles in this journey to the goal: goal setter, framework developer, thought leader, and honest broker. We have published a plan with eight strategies organized under two imperatives: mobilization and design. Mobilization is aimed at getting different actors in post-secondary education (e.g., policy makers, education institutions, non-profits, and employers) to commit to serious increases in attainment of students that are considered “non-traditional” but represent a new majority in the 21st century: students of color, low income, first generation, and adults with some college credit but not a degree.

The second imperative, design and build, is aimed at redesigning key components of the current postsecondary system that we believe will unlock more capacity and better quality to serve those students. To give you an idea of the magnitude of the issue: America currently has only 40% of its working age adults between 18-64 with some sort of recognized credential or degree beyond high school. Our goal is to increase attainment to 60%, without losing quality (or even doing a better job with quality of learning). This means getting 23 million more people in the U.S. studying and receiving a meaningful credential, certificate, or degree post high school. We believe that credentialed learning is currency for individuals and the country. We can attract more jobs of the future, and grow our economy by $500 billion if we can have that done by 2025.

Many foundations would traditionally issue an RFP and/or award grants to address their needs. What prompted you to partner with InnoCentive and use crowdsourcing as part of your strategy?

We will continue to issue targeted RFPs and grants as our main vehicles to fund relevant work, but open innovation adds to our capacity to bring solutions from talented Solvers all over the world that otherwise we would never reach. Our agreement with InnoCentive is perfect for that, since they have the community, processes, and tools to make that happen in a very well organized and transparent way.

The Foundation’s focus is on higher education in America, yet many of our Solvers are from other countries. How do you believe our non-U.S. Solvers can contribute and provide value?
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The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and its partner Humanity United recently announced the first-round winners of the Tech Challenge for Atrocity Prevention – a technology competition enlisting Solvers from around the world in support of the White House’s effort to design new tools to help prevent and respond to mass atrocities. Seven innovations won first, second, and third place prizes ranging from $1,000 to $5,000; information about the winners and their solutions can be found here. USAID and Humanity United have just launched three new Challenges, one of which is being run on the InnoCentive platform and is offering a $20,000 prize purse for a Mechanism for Secure 2-way Communications During a Crisis. We recently spoke with Mark Goldenbaum, a Democracy Specialist at USAID, about the Tech Challenge series, the successful completion of the first two Challenges, and the newly launched Secure Communications Challenge.

Hello Mr. Goldenbaum – thanks for joining us today. Could you take us back a bit in time and help us to understand the genesis of the Tech Challenge series and your primary objectives for the program?

In April 2012, President Obama unveiled his comprehensive strategy to prevent and respond to atrocities at a moving speech at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial and Museum. I was lucky enough to be sitting in the crowd that day for the President’s speech, and it was an unforgettable thrill when he mentioned that USAID would seek new applications of technology to help with this issue. Of course, we had been working for several weeks behind the scenes to design an approach for doing just that. And whether I knew it at the time or not, the best thing that happened to USAID in that process was linking up with Humanity United (HU), a private foundation dedicated to this issue, bringing creative thinking and energy as well as contacts and deep knowledge of this field. Together, we committed to a “Challenge” approach that would help us identify innovative applications of new and existing technologies to the issue of atrocity prevention. As for the five problem areas that we chose to focus on, these were initially identified by USAID and HU after a series of internal consultations, but then greatly strengthened and refined by reaching out to broad range of groups and experts working on these issues to make sure these reflected real world needs and opportunities.

What was your primary motivation for crowdsourcing your Challenges (as opposed to using more “traditional” means such as academic research or grants to solicit ideas and solutions)?

Broadly speaking, both USAID and HU are interested in “open source development” processes such as these to engage a broader and more diverse community than we might otherwise reach. While the professional development community and human rights groups are doing inspiring work in their own right, the idea that other fields of research or industry might have technologies, approaches, or tools that could be easily adapted to advance development or achieve conflict prevention goals is incredibly exciting. Engaging universities, students, non-profits focused on other fields, the private sector, engineers, developers, and others has been a long-standing goal, and the emergence of platforms such as InnoCentive now give us the tools to more easily do that.

What’s your sense of the role that the NASA Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation (CoECI) is playing in helping to guide other federal agencies in their use of open Challenges and prizes?

Clearly, there is a lot happening inside and outside of government related to the use of prizes and Challenges. Too often, we find ourselves having to recreate the wheel or repeat others’ mistakes that could have been avoided. As both a taxpayer and a federal employee, I was thrilled to find out that there was a dedicated resource created with the intention of helping other federal agencies and departments tap into a source of best practices and collective learning, and help them to better understand the state of the art. My grandfather was actually a Mission Control engineer with NASA, so I was predisposed to liking CoECI. But they have certainly surpassed my highest expectations, helping neophytes like myself better understand the industry, find the right partners, ask the right questions, and design our Challenges in a way that puts us in a position to find the best solutions. CoECI has been a great partner, and any success that we have is certainly in large part due to their assistance.

For your first two Challenges, you recognized seven innovations and awarded first, second, and third place prizes ranging from $1,000 to $5,000. What stood out among the seven innovations and differentiated them from the other solution submissions? Read the rest of this entry »

Adam Rivers, a Nature-referred Solver, won the Heat Stable Prevention of Flavan3-ols – Iron (II) Interactions Challenge.

I recently solved a Challenge about milkshakes that seemingly had nothing to do with my day job working as a postdoc in marine science at the University of Georgia. I’m a biological oceanographer by training, but the Challenge I solved was about iron and beverage discoloration. During my PhD at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution/MIT, I studied how marine microbes interact with natural iron binding chemicals called siderophores. When I read the detailed description of the problem, I realized that it was essentially another case of an iron complexation reaction that occurs naturally in the ocean. Almost immediately, I had a few ideas. I ran through some of the kinetic equations and did a bit of kitchen chemistry, and after a long weekend, I had come up with a solution to the problem.

I read about InnoCentive on Nature.com a few years back and signed up to receive emails about Challenges. All of the problems don’t catch my eye, but occasionally, there will be a problem that I quickly have an idea about. I’m always dreaming up new products or ways to improve things. If you have that kind of personality, ideas (some good, some bad) come all the time, but of course you can’t pursue most of them. It can take years to pursue an idea academically or start a company based on an idea. InnoCentive is great because it allows anyone to invest a little bit of time writing up the sort of ideas that come to them all the time.

I have a long-term goal to build simple devices that can describe microbial communities remotely and send that ecological information to a web browser anywhere. As a spinout of that work, I’ve built a user-friendly lab freezer monitor that I’m trying to commercialize. Developing a product is a very different process; the biggest challenge is not solving a problem but making sure you are solving the right problem. With InnoCentive Challenges, the problem has already been found, I just focus on finding an answer. It’s fun to have an outlet to apply my knowledge in unexpected ways. My training in one field brought a fresh perspective to a problem in another field; the ability of open innovation to borrow ideas from other fields was certainly an advantage in solving this Challenge.

The Neurofibromatosis Therapeutic Accelerations Program (NTAP) at Johns Hopkins launched a Challenge in mid-January which seeks creative ways to identify which plexiform neurofibroma tumors will undergo significant growth in individuals who have neurofibromatosis type 1 (a syndrome with a well-defined genetic cause but complex biology at the tissue level). We recently spoke with Dr. Jaishri Blakeley, Assistant Professor of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Oncology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the Director of the Johns Hopkins Comprehensive Neurofibromatosis Center, about this important Challenge which is scheduled to run through February 13, 2013.

Hello Dr. Blakeley – thanks for joining us today. Could you help us understand more about neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) and its symptoms, causes, and current treatments?

NF1 is a common (prevalence 1:2700) autosomal dominant neurogenetic disorder caused by a mutation on chromosome 17q that results in reduced levels of neurofibromin. One well described role of neurofibromin is the regulation of the Ras pathway. It is thought that chronic activation of the Ras pathway in the absence of normal neurofibromin causes the symptoms of NF1. Clinically, NF1 presents with diverse clinical features ranging from mild skin markings to learning difficulties, brain tumors, peripheral tumors, bone abnormalities, and various forms of cancer. 

The hallmark tumor of NF1 is the neurofibroma. These are tumors composed of nerve elements such as Schwann cells and neural tissue but also fibroblasts, mast cells, and pericytes. The most common form of neurofibroma is the cutaneous (skin) form that can number into the thousands in a given patient and can be disfiguring due to their appearance on the skin, but are not otherwise medically dangerous. Far more medically concerning are plexiform neurofibromas that occur along peripheral nerves throughout the body and can take over an entire body region. These tumors may compress vital structures such as the spinal cord or major vessels, cause neurologic dysfunction or pain, or lead to extensive regional disfigurement. Up to 50% of patients with NF1 have at least one plexiform neurofibroma. Plexiform neurofibromas also have a risk of transforming into malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumors, which are very aggressive sarcomas. The only established treatment for neurofibromas is surgery. Unfortunately, given that these tumors grow within the normal nerve structure, complete resection can result in major nerve damage, and with incomplete resection, the tumors simply continue to grow. Hence, we are in desperate need of additional treatments for plexiform neurofibromas. The trick is that in NF1, a patient may have four plexiform neurofibromas and three of them will never cause a problem, but that fourth one may cause terrible problems. We need a way to predict which tumor is going to be the “bad egg” before it starts. 

Since January 2012, when NTAP was created to fast-track the development of therapies to treat tumors associated with NF1, what are some of the key accomplishments that can you point to?

NTAP was founded to focus research efforts entirely on creating and supporting opportunities that encourage the most thoughtful and efficient development of therapies for plexiform neurofibromas. The first step in this process was to perform an analysis of where the field was in order to allow identification of areas that needed the greatest attention and resources. We identified several key areas of need including cell culture models, a need to predict tumor behavior in order to allow prevention, clinical trial outcome measures, and natural history data pools. NTAP is supporting all of these initiatives in order to “fertilize the field” so that research across the board is developed to help patients with NF1 as quickly as possible. Thus far, we have fast tracked a cellular culture model initiative, partnered with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to advance a natural history initiative, and are actively building collaborations to bridge the excellent scientists within the field of NF and those new to the syndrome. Our mission is to move good ideas into thoughtful research questions as quickly as possible so that the things with the best chance of helping patients get developed as rapidly as science will allow. This takes a broad outreach, a lot of partnership, high energy, and a willingness to take some risks with “out of the box” ideas.

As an Ideation Challenge with a guaranteed award for at least one submitted solution, what are some of the key attributes you’d like to see in a winning solution? Read the rest of this entry »

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? Read the rest of this entry »