Perspectives on Innovation

The third Economist Challenge is all about disruption – disruptive innovation that is! The Challenge is to create business models that reinvent the established and prevailing means of doing business. Or in other words, disrupt what is current, which is the very soul of innovativeness.

The Challenge, aptly called Disruptive Innovation , is a great opportunity for innovative business minds, and is perfect for MBA students. As new-comers to the business world, The Economist and InnoCentive believe that MBA students are uniquely positioned to be extremely innovative and disruptive to conventional business models. We want to give you – MBA students – a soap-box to stand on and a large megaphone to call attention to your ideas. This is a perfect opportunity for you to align yourself with The Economist, showcase your innovative ideas (with the potential for funding!) and gain experience and exposure at the Ideas Economy conference in March 2011. Wouldn’t that be a great resume detail!

The business plan can be for a new business or a new model or approach to a current business, but it must embody “disruptive innovation.” Not only will MBA students have the potential to win a cash award of $5,000-$10,000, but the winning Solver will be elevated to the position of speaker or participant at the March 2011 conference in Berkeley, California and will have the perfect opportunity to gain international exposure for themselves and their ideas.

Remember, the “biz plan” can be on ANY subject or topic as long as it is innovative and conventionally disruptive, viable for success and scalable. So put on your thinking caps, let the creative juices flow, unleash your inner disruptiveness and let your imagination soar! Wouldn’t it be awesome to tell your professors, fellow students and future business partners that your business plan was showcased with The Economist!

We recently posted a Challenge with Scientists Without Borders, to help them reduce infant mortality by fortifying staple foods with Folic acid. We asked Shaifali Puri, Executive Director for Scientists Without Borders, to talk to us a bit about this Challenge.

Hi Shaifali – thanks for talking to our Solvers today.  You currently have several Challenges posted on The Scientists without Borders platform. What made you choose to work with InnoCentive for this particular Challenge?

While we have a wonderful global network of users and strategic partners, we were very excited to partner with InnoCentive to also reach its network of creative problem-solvers from around the world and, in keeping with the spirit of open innovation, to go beyond our own universe of “experts.” In my conversations with the InnoCentive leadership and team, it was very clear that we shared a similar outlook about the power of Challenges and a wide open network of diverse and unusual Solvers to tackle some of our thorniest global development challenges.

PepsiCo is sponsoring the prize. Can you tell us how this collaboration came about and what PepsiCo’s goals are in respect to finding this solution?

PepsiCo is a general supporter of Scientists Without Borders and they were very excited about our vision of leveraging our web-based platform, user base, and strategic public/private partner network to bring new and innovative approaches to tackling urgent global development challenges. They agree with our view that if we are to really try to move from evolutionary to revolutionary progress in these areas, we have to bring in new perspectives, new Solvers, new methods. Once Scientists Without Borders narrowed the focus of this Challenge to the nutrition space, it was clear that they would be a natural fit.

In my conversations with the Global Health team at PepsiCo, it was clear that they shared Scientists Without Borders goal of addressing a Challenge for which a practicable, feasible and scalable solution could be deployed across a wide range of geographies. I was also very gratified that they were entirely on board with Scientists Without Borders mission and goal of ensuring that the Challenge would be framed in an independent, neutral, and credible fashion – meaning Scientists Without Borders convened an independent panel of three of the world’s leading nutrition scientists and vested them with the authority to identify and frame the Challenge. Similarly, PepsiCo was entirely in agreement with Scientists Without Borders commitment to ensuring to the best of its ability that any Solution that surfaces is in line with its public good mission, and that it is developed and advanced in the manner best suited to ensuring that those who need it will be able to access it as readily as possible.

You mention that combating under-nutrition is crucial to achieving all of the Millennium Development Goal targets. Can you explain what the Millennium Development Goal is? (more…)

Jason Harper is the 3rd Place winner of the 2010 InnoCentive Video Challenge Changing the World.

My story is a little unique; I joined InnoCentive to promote InnoCentive via video. In advertising, you’ve got to find a reason to believe in the power of a brand. If you don’t have a reason to believe, then the people who you’re selling to certainly won’t have a reason to believe. Fortunately, that wasn’t difficult for me. InnoCentive outsources talent worldwide. Solutions can come from anywhere. That’s brilliant. I crafted a message that had everything to do with the individual — the lone man or woman developing that midnight idea that could change the world. It takes that personal foresight and dedication to see beyond what the crowd is doing and reach for something new.

When I founded my media production company (www.jmharpermedia.com), I did so on the basis that the forthcoming generation is a digital generation. There are positives and negatives to this movement, and the film industry, my industry, isn’t immune. We’re undergoing a radical format change. The switch from analog film to digital changes everything from aesthetics to production schedules, payouts, crewing, you name it. I knew that this new wave of change would be led by new media, and that meant that new content opportunities would emerge and live predominantly on the internet. My company now produces brand-sponsored storytelling online. It’s a simple way to inspire people. And that’s what InnoCentive does. The challenges are like ready-made inspiration. All that’s left to do is the creative. All that’s left to do is solve.

This post, by InnoCentive Innovation Expansion Manager Chad Carrington, originally appeared on the  E&P blog on 11/10/2010.

Transferring technology from one industry to another should be simple, but in practice, it is much more easily said than done.

Engineers, scientists, and R&D personnel are familiar with the technologies they come in contact with day to day, but they do not have much familiarity with the technologies used in other business sectors. Identifying those technologies and determining their application to solve problems in the oil and gas industry is an enormous challenge. The scope is extremely broad, and the technology needed often is very specialized.

Fortunately, companies interested in finding solutions outside the oil and gas industry have a tool available to them that gives them access to specialists from a broad range of industries. InnoCentive pairs “Seekers” who need solutions to challenging technical problems with “Solvers” who offer those solutions. For nine years, InnoCentive has worked with innovative organizations to solve their problems in this way.

As the oil and gas industry faces greater and more exacting technical challenges, it becomes more important to be able to innovate rapidly. InnoCentive helps that to happen, pairing Seekers with Solvers from fields as varied as construction and medicine. These pairings have produced interesting and innovative solutions that would not otherwise have materialized. (more…)