Perspectives on Innovation

I have some exciting news to share with you today.  As a result of all your feedback last year, we have multiple website updates planned this year.  The first update is now live and appears in the “My InnoCentive” area of the website.  For Solvers, this is the section of the website you see once you’ve logged in.  We focused on 5 key changes that we hope will make the website easier to use and more informative: (more…)

by InnoCentive Founder Alph Bingham, Ph.D

There has been a recent discussion on the LinkedIn Open Innovation group around use of incentives for public good.  In that discussion, David Lincoln, founder of Novipella, raised some excellent and very thoughtful points about how Open innovation (OI) may evolve and what consequences might eventually arise.  These are, in fact, so thoughtful, that I am not surprised to learn that he was trained in synthetic organic chemistry .

David’s comments were specifically in regard to the Reduction to Practice (RTP) Challenge type, and the expense involved in operating a lab necessary to work on these Challenges — an expense which is not recovered unless the solution submitted by that lab or practitioner is successful and awarded.  This is a potential disincentive for some researchers who may be able to provide a solution but are wary of undergoing the expensive endeavor of developing and validating their solution without the guarantee of payment. 

It is a problem that was considered at the launch of InnoCentive — and in fact, the very first RTP Challenges were seen as an experiment in the business model itself.  Could/would Solvers absorb the risk of investing in a reduction-to-practice?

In an interesting quirk of history, those first Challenges were issued just prior to the major anthrax scare of 2001.  As a consequence of that timing, in the late fall of 2001, both U.S. government officials, and InnoCentive began receiving white powders in the mail from unfamiliar addresses.  We, however, did NOT don hazmat suits.  We cheered.  The model worked!  Since those early experiments we have striven to understand why it worked and how InnoCentive can facilitate success for both Seeker and Solver to an even greater degree. (more…)

The vast majority of Challenges posted by InnoCentive Seekers are of such a confidential nature that we are never permitted to reveal even the Seeker’s identity, much less the actual solution.  However, we recently announced that the SunNight Solar Challenge, which was seeking a solar powered mosquito repellant to combat malaria had been awarded.  We are very fortunate in this instance, that the Seeker, SunNight Solar, and the Solver, Tom Kruer, have been willing to talk about the winning solution.  Below is an overview of the solution, provided by Solver Tom Kruer.

This blog entry describes, in detail the winning entry for the InnoCentive Challenge entitled “Reducing Risk of Malaria with Solar Powered Device”. The simple, passive solar device is shown in the illustration at left.

Not surprisingly, coming up with a viable solution to this Challenge involved the typical phases of product development project. Research uncovered the relatively few critical features that the product absolutely needed to have in order to be successful. The design phase generated and evaluated a number of alternative approaches which incorporated these critical features.  Two of these designs broke all the rules (including the ultimate solution) which the Seeker agreed to at least look at. A couple of crude functional prototypes were constructed to prove that the concept was feasible.  After that, it just was time to crunch some cost estimates and write up the submission for InnoCentive.

It must be pointed out that the Rockefeller Foundation and SunNight Solar deserve a great deal of praise for agreeing to publish this information and achieve as wide an audience as possible… with the ultimate hope of eradicating this terrible disease.  (more…)

Zacary Brown, an InnoCentive Solver from Texas, was the winner of the ASSET India Challenge seeking a solar powered wireless router.

I’ve been interested in both radios and solar power for many years. I remember sitting in front of my father’s antique RCA receiver as a child, listening to shortwave broadcasts from around the world as I wondered how the signals could travel such great distances. Similarly, I remember my parents explaining how the solar panels that Jimmy Carter had installed at the White House could make electricity from sunlight. Both seemed like magic to me at the time.

I studied Computer Science during college and spent a good deal of time studying the design and construction computer network protocols. I had the privilege of taking a networking course from Simon Lam, Ph.D., who has been involved in network research and development since the 1970s, and who piqued my interest in wireless networking in particular.

During college, I became an amateur radio operator, and began making contact with other radio operators around the world. I am currently working on a rather lengthy goal of making contact with every country in the world. I have built and tinkered with quite a few radios, antenna systems, and ancillary components over the years. Perhaps most relevant to this specific problem, I have studied the design, construction, and operation of amateur radio networks. Their purposes and components differ, but they are similar in many ways to the network called for in this problem. Also during college, I began using the Linux operating system, which I have since employed many times in embedded systems and specialized computers such as network routers.

Recently, I have integrated solar power into my amateur radio activities. I have constructed several solar powered stations which employ many of the same design principles that I applied to this problem. I had the benefit of already having built similar systems when I wrote the proposal for ASSET India. My goal is to eventually power my entire office via solar power.

The most difficult design aspects of the ASSET India challenge were related to the very specific network protocol requirements. Luckily, I was able to find the excellent M.I.T. “Roofnet Project”, which had already addressed those same problems and whose researchers had published quite a few papers on the subject.

Find out more about the ASSET India Challenge.