Perspectives on Innovation

Bogdan and Stephanie Yamkovenko won The Economist-Nielsen Data Visualization Challenge, which asked the World to review Nielsen consumer data, generate insightful conclusions with broad implications, and present a compelling visual presentation of the most interesting ideas from the data. Over 4,000 Solvers from 101 countries signed up to participate in the Challenge. To view the Yamkovenko’s winning submission, a video of them presenting it at The Economist World in 2013 Festival, and profiles of all the Challenge finalists, please click here.

We saw an advertisement in The Economist for the Data Visualization Challenge sponsored by Nielsen and The Economist. The focus of the Challenge was to analyze a data set provided by Nielsen and to tell a story using data visualization. I am a journalist and have also done graphic design in the past, so I knew I could handle the visual story telling. Bogdan is a researcher and assistant professor with an affinity for statistics, which means that he could easily handle the data analysis.

Bogdan and I have been married for six years and had never previously collaborated professionally on a project. This Data Visualization Challenge was a great opportunity for us to combine our skills and, ultimately, be competitive.

We began our work on the Challenge with a brainstorm about the Nielsen global dataset, which consisted of the Nielsen Global Consumer Confidence Index and other data about consumer spending and purchasing habits. We decided to supplement the dataset with other widely available economic indicators (such as unemployment rates). We noticed that countries that had high confidence in their economies were not necessarily the best performing economies.

When working on my master’s degree in journalism, I developed an appreciation for my profession’s role as the “fourth estate.” As we looked at the confidence index, we noticed that countries such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt had high confidence, but their economies weren’t doing that great. We wondered whether democracy was playing a role in the citizens’ confidence. We decided to include the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index in our analysis, and found that countries with the highest confidence also had the most restricted press. This finding gave us a compelling story to tell and gave the original Nielsen dataset more context and depth. (more…)

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.

I have been working as an SAP Utilities consultant at Accenture for nearly 4 years in Mumbai. In my workplace, my primary role is to provide functional solutions to energy providers across the globe.

I came across The Economist: Pictures of Tomorrow Challenge on The Economist’s Android application. I first thought of one problem that has deeply affected my community: the poor transport management system. When I took part in the Challenge, I recalled how one of my acquaintances had slipped and lost his life while traveling on a train’s foot board. This incident wouldn’t have occurred if proper transport system was in place. People are forced to travel in extremely crowded trains and buses because there are no alternative modes of transport. My main idea was about improving the transport management system in Mumbai. Currently, the strain on trains and buses is enormous due to the ever increasing population. People are forced to travel using conventional modes of transport thus leading to overcrowding. However, if the vast coastline of Mumbai can be used for water transport and dedicated bicycle lanes can be kept for commuters, the problem of transport management can be solved. I feel that my idea won because this problem is being faced in many other cities across the world and hence everyone can relate to it.

After winning the Challenge, my family and friends felt extremely proud and it is great to see them happy. Also, office friends can’t stop raving about me and my manager dropped an email to our entire team of 40 people appreciating me. I feel an additional sense of responsibility now to achieve my goal of improving my community in 2012. With the cash prize, I indulged myself in some long overdue shopping and after coming to California, I intend to spend some part of my cash prize money over there.

I think that The Economist-InnoCentive Challenge series is a great boon for people who have a burning desire for the betterment of society and have great ideas to achieve that goal. This Challenge series gives them a platform to express themselves and achieve something constructive over a period of time.

Overall, last 3 months have been great and further strengthened my self belief that I can achieve greater goals in the future.

Outside my workplace, I have co-directed a short film of 30 minutes and I have also penned education-related articles for local newspapers. I taught computer skills to child abuse victims at St. Catherine’s School, affiliated to the Archdiocesan board of education. I am also a huge soccer fan and follow almost all of the European leagues. I am glad I am a part of this great community of InnoCentive Solvers for whom ideas are a form of currency!

Corinne Le Buhan was recently selected as the winner of The Economist-Innocentive Human Potential Index Challenge. In addition to the $10,000 award, Corinne was invited to present her solution at The Economist Ideas Economy: Human Potential conference in New York in September 2011. You can view her full solution here, and her presentation here.

How did you hear about InnoCentive and why did you become an InnoCentive Solver?

Curiosity brought me to Innocentive in the first place. As a freelance consultant in intellectual property and innovation management, I wanted to better understand how innovation crowdsourcing works in practice and what new opportunities it enables for my customers. This approach is not very well known yet and is often feared because of the loss of control it seems to imply, but that can be addressed with the right framework and process. So, I registered as a Solver to test it… and ended submitting an ideation Challenge on my own simply because it was inspiring me.

Have you attempted other InnoCentive Challenges?

So far, I have not attempted other Innocentive Challlenges, but I did consider a few. It’s a lot of work to compile a good proposal. You need to gather the relevant part of your background knowledge, you need to devote some time to further explore what other solutions already exist elsewhere and enrich your thinking accordingly, and then you still need to articulate your nascent ideas as clearly as possible to formalize a suitable answer to the Challenge requirements. This process is somewhat similar capturing a technical invention into a good patent description and claims… you need significant quiet time to think and write about it! So I can only work on Challenges when I have enough free time left besides my day-to-day business.

What motivated you to work on the Challenge that you ended up winning?

What particularly motivated me to devote extra-hours building an answer to the Human Potential Index Challenge was its larger purpose and meaning than what I’m usually working on. In my humble view, GDP-based metrics are depressing the whole western economies in a schizophrenic way as we grow GDP at the expense of other goals such as environmental preservation. Still, I personally have the opportunity to interact with a number of creative and positive-minded engineers who have not given up their faith in mankind capability to design new technologies, even if sometimes just for the fun of it. So I thought there must be a way to better capture that, as a human potential index measurement, than with GDP-derived metrics, and that where I started from.

What do you like about working on Challenges?

I like working on almost anything, and Challenges are even more rewarding because it is a creative work. I also like more and more being able to connect and share knowledge from very different fields as my life experience and understanding develops. Challenges like the one I submitted provide a very good opportunity to do so.

What would you like to see happen with your solution?

I now try to integrate my proposal into a larger initiative. I’m using the visibility it gave me to connect to other people with the same concerns and hopes on the need for a better human potential development measurement. I think there’s room for further formalism and prototyping from real data in this area, but this requires funding of some sort. Ideas that are not implemented in the end are just ideas, not innovations… that’s nice, but a bit worthless. I hope we can move to the next step, and have already started to connect to other Challengers to evaluate if there’s enough momentum to further build something concrete out of our respective ideas, expertise and networks.

You can read Corinne’s bio at http://www.ipstudies.ch/about/

Daniel Castro recently won the Economist-InnoCentive Healthcare Information Economy Challenge. This Challenge was part of the Economist Challenge Series and as the winner, Daniel was invited to present his solution at the Economist Ideas Economy Information event, which took place in Santa Clara in June of 2011. Daniel’s winning solution can be viewed here.

I’m a senior analyst at a Washington, DC-based think tank where I work on a variety of policy issues related to information technology. Generally, I look at how different types of public policy can help spur the adoption and use of technology that help improve economic productivity and quality of life. My key focus is on information policy, such as privacy and security, and I am especially interested in how policymakers can help spur more innovation through the use of data.

Before beginning my career at the think tank, I worked at the Government Accountability Office (GAO) where I audited information security controls at various government agencies. Working in government gave me a great opportunity to see how government policies are implemented firsthand, an experience which is invaluable in my current job. My academic background is fairly diverse: I received a B.S. in Foreign Service at Georgetown University before switching gears and obtaining an M.S. in information security from Carnegie Mellon University. I have found that having both strong technical expertise and a background in the liberal arts has given me many opportunities to pursue the projects that most interest me. (more…)