The InnoCentive Insider: Finding What You Need on InnoCentive.com
In the second installment of the InnoCentive Client Services blog series, Marilyn provides a primer on one of the most important, and most under-used resources available to InnoCentive Solvers.
Greetings from Marilyn:
I handle the Support line at InnoCentive’s home office here in Waltham, MA. Many questions are received at my desk and hopefully answered in a timely fashion. However, in this article, I would like to pose a few questions for you. If you can answer them you can probably skip to the bottom of this post for the “how can you help?” question.
Specifically, do you know:
- Where you can review all the submissions you’ve sent to InnoCentive?
- Where you can find the evaluations sent by our scientists addressing those submissions?
- How you change your password?
- Where to go to update your picture or bio when you win a Challenge?
- Where to go to update your interests or expertise?
If you continue reading and do a bit of exploring, you should be able to answer all of these questions!
To start, I’d like to provide a quick overview of a great resource that we have for you. We call it “My InnoCentive” because, as a Solver, each of you have your own page containing all of your unique information and documenting all of your activity on our site.
There are currently 4 sections to this page:
My Challenges
This section contains Challenges we think you’d be most interested in, as well as your open, closed, and awarded Challenges.
The Open Challenges section lists the current Challenges on the MarketPlace for which you have opened a Project Room. A red envelope by the Challenge Number alerts you to any new messages waiting about the Challenge. To re-enter the Project Room, submit solutions, ask questions or retrieve messages, click on the Challenge number.
As the Challenges close and are taken off the InnoCentive MarketPlace, all the information contained in the Project Room is moved to the Closed Challenges tab where it is always available for you to review. All messages and submissions are available for review on any Challenge for which you have opened a Project Room. If you have a winning submission the Challenge will be moved to the Awarded Challenges tab.
My Interests
By clicking on the tab and highlighting My Interests, you can share your Interests and/or Expertise. We encourage you to share this information so we are better able to suggest new Challenges as they are posted to the InnoCentive MarketPlace.
My Account
The My Account tab allows you to update email, password, mailing address, and other contact information. If you are a member of the SAP community you are able to store your User Id on this page. Here is also where you can share a bit more info on yourself and subscribe to email notifications and our Newsletter.
My Public Profile
The My Public Profile is where you enter the data that will be displayed on the Awarded Challenge page when you become an Awarded Solver. You can choose to remain anonymous or complete the different fields found there. Be sure to click the Publicize button by each data field. You can even upload a picture.
In Closing…
ALWAYS remember to Save changes when you alter any of the fields on the My Interests, My Account or My Public Profile tabs. I all too often forget to Save changes and get annoyed until I realize I am the guilty one for not clicking Save! My InnoCentive is where you have access to all your history with us. Please take a look! The easiest and only way to get there is to log in. I bet you are now able to explore and answer all the questions posed at the beginning. You probably can answer a few more questions as well!!
How can you help?
We are in the process of reorganizing some of the information displayed at My InnoCentive. I’d like to hear your thoughts on how to make this resource even more useful to you. If you have ideas to make this area better, please respond in the comments of this post!
November 22nd, 2008 at 12:36 am
Perhaps there is a way, but I would like a way of viewing only the current challenges. I have found that even ones that are past the deadline remain in the list. I would also like the ability to remove a challenge. I dislike the fact that I have to select a challenge to get enough information to determine if I want to pursue one.
November 22nd, 2008 at 4:33 pm
Thanks for your input. We like to hear what our solvers need to improve their experience on our site. We are currently working on a feature to allow a Solver to communicate that they have no interest in working on a Challenge after viewing its details. We would then remove that Challenge from the My InnoCentive page. I also like the idea of removing Challenges past deadline. One consideration might be to remove it only if the solver has not made a submission to the Challenge. I think those who have submitted might like that Challenge still displayed!! Ultimately, wouldn’t it be nice for each Solver to be able to filter what information he or she wants to see on this page?
December 3rd, 2008 at 4:10 pm
[...] Challenges and understanding how to get the most from being an InnoCentive Solver. From a primer on available tools to some insider information about why Challenges are written the way they are to our most recent [...]
December 3rd, 2008 at 4:33 pm
One one short message with no added value, but to tell you that I have exactly the same comments as gward.
Do you plan the possibility to have more detailed look at the challenges (even if we have to accept before a non-disclosire agreement) whithout opening a project room?
The project rooms counters are not relevant today as it encompasses probably a lot of curious possible solvers who do not plan to submit any solution.
December 4th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
All mesages long or short have value. Thank you for taking the time to participate.
Yes, you are correct: Currently the project room counter shows all Solvers who have looked at the details; including those Solvers who may eventually decide not to submit and who are really not interested in working on it. In order to make the project room counter more relevant in the future, we are planning to offer Solvers the option to delete a project room when he or she has decided not to work on the challenge. With this feature in place the project room counter should be closer to the number of people actually working on the Challenge.
I hope this helps and please keep the suggestions coming!!!!
December 9th, 2008 at 11:10 am
Hello,
I have another question. Maybe that I did not find the existing feature in the innocentive.com website but I would like to know whether or not there is the possibility to search for open challenges by “Challenge Type”?
The reason why I am asking this is because I am more interested in ideation challenges, whatever the discipline is. To look for ideation challenges I have to go through all the disciplines and maybe that a “challenge type” option in the search engine could help.
Thanks
December 9th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
Thanks for the question. On any of the discipline pages there is a Search Challenges box at the top that you can use to isolate topics that interest you. If you type ideation in the box then click the Search button; all ideation Challenges will be displayed. Likewise you can search for the other Challenge types; eRFP, RTP or Theoretical. The search is done on all the Challenges and is not limited to the discipline you have selected. You are also able to search for words in a Challenge title or in the Challenge’s brief description that appears on the Marketplace. I hope this helps you find all those Challenges that interest you.