Perspectives on Innovation

I’m not sure when I first heard the term “The New Normal”.  With the internet, it was easy enough to Google the term and, to my surprise, books, articles, and blogs have all laid claim to the phrase for some time. In fact, some declared the New Normal immediately after Y2K as a reflection of the connectedness of technology, markets, and people. Then again after the internet bubble burst, the term was brought back and now again referring to the new realities resulting from the Global Financial Crisis.

The Economic Crisis is heralding a New Normal for Innovation that represents enormous opportunity for 21st century businesses, governments and society. This New Normal is powered by what some call Crowdsourcing and captured more broadly by the term Open Innovation.

Is the Lab your World or the World your Lab?

These terms embody the notion that here in the new economy, marketplaces are emerging that will fundamentally challenge the conventional thinking in areas that include ideation, research, product development, collaboration, and even intellectual property.

This model doesn’t seek to limit the number of minds focused on a problem to a select few, instead it enlists thousands or millions of individuals or groups with a drive to solve problems and to make a difference. Diversity of thought and access to vast networks of qualified minds will become the valuable currency to replace the closed monolithic approaches that literally define most organizations today. (more…)

We recently posted several Challenges that focus on both engineering and the environment, specifically Challenges in the areas of water collection and conservation, harnessing alternative energy from lightning, and improved quality of life during space travel.

Shortly after posting these Challenges, we were approached by the organizers of an international environmental engineering event called Chemozàle .  The founders believed that event attendees would be a perfect audience for these particular Challenges, and, as a service to attendees, posted them on the event web site.  To date, we’ve had more than 100 people from Chemozàle visit our web site to view these Challenges – and hope to see many more.   We believe that Solvers are motivated to work on Challenges that really make a difference – and we are delighted to see the next generation of Solvers come forward to offer their time and efforts to resolve some of the world’s critical issues.

About Chemozàle:

Chemozàle was founded in 1999 as an event for, by and of the Chemical Engineering Students Association (ChESA) of Nirma University.  Now in its 11th year, Chemozàle has grown to include over 100 top Technical & Business schools across India.  Chemozàle takes place in the city of Ahmedabad, and is a combination of workshops, competitions and exhibitions where the budding engineers of tomorrow showcase their creative, business, technical and environmental skills.  This year’s conference theme is ‘Zero Carbon Footprint’, and the festivities will include a tree-planting session to help mitigate the emission of CO2 into the environment. To quote one of the students, their hope is to “plant saplings to the tune equal to the amount of carbon generated because of the event.”

Check out the website, and if you’re a student anywhere in India,  drop by Chemozàle on March 26th and help them plant a tree!

Bruce Hannon is known to many for his weekly email digest highlighting interesting articles, published in various well regarded complexity sources, that span the gamut from all areas of research and inquiry, from the life sciences to the social sciences. What all the articles have in common is that they celebrate interesting findings, provocative theories, and the complexity of the world. Bruce has graciously agreed to allow InnoCentive to repost his “Complexity” Digest from time to time. Thank you Bruce!

Below, you will find Bruce’s “Complexity” Digest #3, we hope you enjoy. Please let us know your feedback and feel free to respond to the blog posts and share your thoughts and reactions with others.

Why you shouldn’t always follow the crowd, Nature

Excerpt:

A peculiar rift must be confronted in going from the individual to the collective, as science writer Len Fisher explains in his book. The Perfect Swarm focuses on swarm intelligence:  ” the emergence of purposeful, effective and flexibly adaptive group behaviour from interactions between members following simple rules. Fisher explores how this phenomenon unites the behaviour of ants, fish, birds and locusts, and how it links to all areas of complexity science, from neurobiology to ecology. He also embraces the tough challenge of translating the science into practical lessons for everyday life.

• Source: Why you shouldn’t always follow the crowd, Mark Buchanan, DOI: 10.1038/464035a, Nature 464, 35, 2010/03/04

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We are currently experimenting with adding content that is also relevant to our Seekers. Even though this is more Seeker-oriented, we hope all our readers find these posts informative.

Evaluation of Solver Proposals is the most exciting, important and time consuming part of working with InnoCentive.  While you’re trying to determine the value of the Proposal based on its technical or business merit, you’re also trying to determine its novelty, strategic value, intellectual property standing and cost of integration.  To help with the evaluation, we’ve provided some helpful tips that have been time-tested by some of our most effective Seeker Clients.

Evaluation Tips

1. Try to limit the number of people who review the submissions to protect yourself from IP contamination. Usually, the owner can make a first pass and filter out a number of the submissions that are not relevant or viable. Then a larger group can spend more time on the top tier Challenges
2. Make a checklist of requirements so you can see which ones are met or addressed by the submissions. This will help differentiate submissions quickly.
3. TAKE NOTES: good notes as you filter solutions will be very useful when you go to write evaluations later on. Otherwise you will end up having to re-read all the submissions because you cannot remember why you rejected it in the first pass. This will save lots of time.
4. Usually, you can group them by approach as several will use the same type of approach even though they are very different. You can then pick the best one using that approach and put the others aside. Then you can compare the best of each approach.
5. You may want to make a matrix or a spreadsheet listing the submissions, approach, requirements met, notes etc. This allows for direct comparison on one sheet.
6. Talk with your InnoCentive IPM (Innovation Program Manager) before you make your final decisions to discuss. (Note: the Solvers will not see anything you do until the IPM approves your evaluations.

Evaluation Differences by Product Type

Ideation Challenges:

1. You retain the rights to ALL solutions but must distribute the entire award amount.
2. You just need to pick the winners and do not have to evaluate each non-winner. You should rate them with a number, but do not have to give reasons for rejection.
3. You receive the contact information of all of the Solvers that are awarded.

Theoretical Licensing Challenges:

1. The submission shall be evaluated on a theoretical basis only. You cannot conduct or require any reduction to practice or experimental validation of the proposal before a monetary award has been paid for the right to do so.
2. You can choose whether or not to purchase any of the proposed solutions for the award amount.
3. You will be granted a non-exclusive license to use any of the technology purchased.
4. You must provide reasons for rejection as described above.
5. You receive the contact information of all of the Solvers that are awarded.

Theoretical IP Challenges:

1. The submission shall be evaluated on a theoretical basis only. You cannot conduct or require any reduction to practice or experimental validation of the proposal before a monetary award has been paid for the right to do so.
2. You can choose whether or not to purchase any of the proposed solutions for the award amount.
3. You will be granted Intellectual Property Rights for any of the technology purchased as submitted in the Proposal.
4. You must provide a number rating and reasons for rejection as described above.
5. You receive the contact information of all of the Solvers that are awarded.

RTP Challenges:

1. The submission can be experimentally validated within the evaluation period.
2. You can choose whether or not to purchase any of the proposed solutions for the award amount.
3. You will be granted an exclusive license to use any of the technology purchased.
4. You must provide a number rating and reasons for rejection as described above.
5. You receive the contact information of all of the Solvers that are awarded.

eRFP Challenges:

1. InnoCentive will provide you with all of the proposals and you may contact the individuals/companies that submitted them.
2. You should discuss with the IPM whether you think you will or will not contact each Solver.
3. Contact information will be included in each submission.

We hope that the tips and guidelines above will help you manage your process of evaluating the Solver proposals that you receive.  As always, if you have any questions or need further assistance during the evaluation stage, please contact the Innovation Program Manager that worked with you during the Challenge development process.  S/he will be able to provide further guidance so that you select the proposal that will add the most value to your organization.

Hello Readers!  I am writing to tell you about some exciting news from the Client Services group at InnoCentive.

Just last week we launched an exciting new Challenge entitled Predictive Data Analysis. This $100,000 Challenge asks Solvers from all backgrounds to build a predictive model based on a complex dataset.  I know, $100,000 on its own makes this Challenge quite special. But, there is another really cool feature that’s so noteworthy – The Prodigy. This website feature allows enables Solvers to get instant feedback on how well they’re doing in comparison to other Solvers.  Sound exciting? Let me tell you a bit more.

First, a bit of background. The Predictive Data Analysis Challenge asks Solvers to build a model using a large dataset in order to estimate the relative performance of various breeds of an organism.  We have provided the molecular and performance data on 100 breeds of the organism and ask Solvers to estimate the relative performance of an independent set of 150 breeds based on their molecular data.  The Prodigy allows Solvers to upload the relative ordering of the breeds and then it will instantly be compared to the known answer provided to InnoCentive by the Seeker.  After submitting, the Prodigy will provide Solvers with their score, their ranking and if they are within the top 10 best submitted scores thus far, their username will appear on the leader’s table.

This feature is obviously not amenable to all of InnoCentive’s Challenges. However, we think that it will encourage you to continue if you’re on the right track and to go back to the drawing board if you aren’t!  We recommend that you log into the Predictive Data Analysis Challenge and let us know what you think about the Prodigy. We’d love to hear from you in the comments section below.

Happy Solving and good luck.

Gabriel Eichler
InnoCentive Client Services