Perspectives on Innovation

In today’s InnoCentive Insider, Peter Lohse talks about the curious fact that many Challenges are awarded to Solvers with expertise outside of the Challenge field.

It has been more than six years since I joined InnoCentive and I continue to be fascinated by the business model and the success we have with delivering solutions to our Clients. Our success rate overall was around 30% at the end of 2005 and is now quickly approaching the 50% mark (on average, for Theoretical and RTP Challenges). We do not have an empirical basis yet for comparing this outcome with the effectiveness of internally focused solution efforts. However, considering that many of the Seekers had been unsuccessful in finding a solution to these problems on their own, I would say the solution rate is quite spectacular.

Much of the praise for this success goes to our Solvers. They are the brains, experimenters and composers behind the winning proposals. The Client Services Team at InnoCentive is in the privileged position to be a first hand witness to our Solvers’ tremendous creativity.  Each of us has seen hundreds of successful submissions, hence we have a pretty good understanding of how a proposal should be formulated to have the potential for winning an award. These learnings are available to all of our Solvers through the InnoCentive newsletter or through this Blog. For example recent postings from my colleagues Lisa Reinhold, Eugene Ivanov and Michael Albarelli provide valuable insights in this regard.  While we believe that Solvers who follow these guidelines will submit proposals which are more likely to be successful, we recognize that factors other than the form of a Solver submission will have an influence on winning an award. It’s some these other factors that I would like to discuss. (more…)

On June 9th, Dwayne Spradlin will be speaking at the prestigious i2i – Incentive2Innovate conference at the United Nations in New York. The conference focuses on open innovation and incentivized competition, and Dwayne will be addressing the topic of integrating open innovation and incentives into an organization’s culture.  As part of his participation in the conference, Dwayne was invited to submit a guest blog post addressing this subject.  Below is the text of that post.

“A Crisis is a Terrible Thing to Waste: Now is the Time to Implement an Open Innovation Culture”

Every day new proof points confirm that adopting an “open” innovation culture delivers better innovations, faster cycle times, and improved economics. Many forward-thinking organizations embraced “open” in past good economic times and have created sustainable competitive advantage for themselves. These organizations moved cultural and political mountains to make this happen and for them “open” innovation will pay enormous dividends in today’s down economy.

But what about all the other organizations that must now think differently in order to survive? They continue to cling to dated ideas that they must invent, control, and own every aspect of their existence. They have erected legal, cultural, and political roadblocks to engaging the rest of the world in their businesses and are now paying the price. They desperately need “open” innovation, but are reacting to this economic crisis by “hunkering down” and will miss the opportunity to embrace change. Therein lies the challenge: they must learn to be “open” during a time when their business has the least will to think differently. (more…)

Harvey Arbesman, a Solver from Buffalo, New York, recently won the Discovery Prize for the InnoCentive Prize4Life ALS Biomarker Challenge.

I am a board-certified dermatologist in private practice in a suburb of Buffalo. I graduated from the University at Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and did my dermatology residency at University Hospitals in Cleveland, Ohio. In addition to dermatology, I have always been interested in public health and epidemiology. So, while continuing to see patients in my private dermatology practice, I decided to go back to school and obtained my Masters of Science in Epidemiology from the University at Buffalo School of Public Health and Health-Related Professions.

I really enjoy looking at different problems from new angles with “out of the box” thinking and seeking out clues from epidemiology and old medical textbooks and journals. I try to think of new ways to prevent, diagnose or treat different medical problems. To assist me in this goal, I also earned a certificate in Facilitating Creative Problem Solving from the International Center for Studies in Creativity (where the term “brainstorming” was coined).

In 2002, my wife Marian and I founded ArbesIdeas, Inc., a research and development company devoted to innovation in health-related issues. I am currently the Vice President. I love learning about new and innovative approaches to health-related issues and combine my medical background with a passion for new ideas to develop new medical hypotheses and innovative health-related products.

I have published in various medical journals including the Journal of the American Medical Association, the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology and Medical Hypotheses. I am currently a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Dermatology in the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences where I teach dermatology residents about clinical epidemiology and hypothesis generation. I am also a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine in the School of Public Health and Health Professions at the University at Buffalo.

I have participated in different InnoCentive Challenges dealing with various areas of medicine, including ALS, Muscular Dystrophy and Tuberculosis.

Find out more about Harvey and ArbesIdeas at www.arbesideas.com/
Find out more about the Prize4Life ALS Biomarker Challenge.

We recently posted a Challenge from a Fortune 500 Agricultural Sciences client, seeking an efficient chromosome doubling method in plants, in particular with respect to the identification of an optimal mitotic arrest agent and protocol.   Although this client has chosen to remain anonymous, they have offered to share some thoughts about the Challenge with us.  This is the first time we’ve posted a “Seeker Spotlight” without identifying the Seeker, and we’d like to know what you think – is it still valuable for you to hear from the Seeker if you don’t know who they are?  Tell us in the comments.  As always, Challenge specifics should only be discussed in the Challenge project room.

Hi Frank – thanks for agreeing to talk to our Solvers about your Challenge.  Can you tell us why you posted your Challenge on InnoCentive’s open innovation marketplace?

Sure.  In posting this web Challenge, we are seeking input, not only from plant biologists, but also from experts in seemingly unrelated disciplines.   For example, Solvers with expertise in either prokaryotic or eukaryotic realms of science perhaps such as 1) the regulation, stimulation, and synchronization of cell division,  2) microtubule assembly-disassembly dynamics, 3) regulation and control of chromosome movement, 4) regulation of cell fate, and 4) a medicinal fields such as cancer research (i.e,  reduction of uncontrolled cell division) may have skill sets that are directly applicable to the Challenge.

Could you provide a bit of background about this Challenge? 

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