Perspectives on Innovation

As 2010 draws to a close we would like to thank you all for your support of InnoCentive. We achieved great things with your help, and anticipate the same momentum in the upcoming year. But, before looking forward to 2011, let’s take a few moments to consider the past year, and recap major InnoCentive milestones in 2010. After all, a good retrospective can put you in the right frame of mind to tackle the future.

The past year has been exciting and groundbreaking in many ways: we launched the Emergency Response 2.0 pavilion in response to the BP Oil Spill and other natural disasters; we helped propel collaboration and Challenge-Driven Innovation in the U.S. Government by working with NASA, In-Q-Tel and other government agencies; Solvers from around the world (people just like you) had an unprecedented opportunity to contribute to the NASA program and impact how the U.S. explores the “final frontier;” and we helped Toyota elicit ideas to improve the world using some of their most innovative technologies through their  Ideas for Good initiative. Then there were the Public Good Challenges, Partnerships with Nature and The Economist, and major improvements to our products and website. (more…)

Yury Bodrov is a multi-Challenge winner, one of which is the NASA Challenge “Improved Barrier Layers… Keeping Food Fresh in Space.”

I studied at the Saint-Petersburg Institute of Technology and concentrated in the Chemistry of Biologically Active Substances program. Then I worked in the Russian Scientific Center of Applied Chemistry (in Saint-Petersburg) on various problems in synthetic chemistry, chemical kinetics and physical chemistry. Nanotechnology became my main scientific interest in 2003, so I went back to the Saint-Petersburg Institute of Technology to continue my education as PhD student in protein based hybrid nanostructures. I currently continue to work in this area and to create new materials for biomolecular nano-electronics.

I had learned about InnoCentive five years ago in 2005. Since then, I have participated many times in InnoCentive Challenges, but was always unsuccessful. Suddenly, in 2007, fortune smiled at me and I managed to win a Challenge. I think it was thanks to my wife and two my beautiful daughters who have always supported me in all my interests.

I often ask myself what is the real reason that I participate in InnoCentive Challenges? Probably, to be really honest, the main reason is the passion. The spirit of competition that InnoCentive has fostered has had an amazing effect. The desire to test one-self, the desire to understand and evaluate the potential of one-self, pushes me to repeatedly participate on InnoCentive Challenges. I am not a fan of gambling and I think gambling is somewhat different. By participating on the InnoCentive Challenges you bet primarily on your own intellect and the challenge itself is essentially a challenge of intellects.

Another equally compelling reason is the creative component of the InnoCentive Challenges. The sensation of being able to create something in its pure form is simply breathtaking. You can create your solution yourself, and despite the fact that there are certain set conditions (the Project Criteria), the boundaries for creativity do not exist because any problem can be solved by several methods.

And perhaps there is one more important thing. If you win, it means that you have contributed to decrease entropy on the planet. And your idea will be used in an application that is really needed for people today. Here is an example. All of us dream of Space in our childhood. Perhaps this childhood dream remains when we become adults. Therefore, by participating in the NASA Challenges, I was hoping that my idea will win and then it will be utilized up in an actual space project; that is the dream and hope of people today. So when I received the good news that my solution for the NASA Challenge “Improved Barrier Layers… Keeping Food Fresh in Space” won, I was extremely happy about that. I just imagined that my idea, albeit in adapted form, could be implemented in a real NASA Mars mission. This is a great honor and it is a chance to possibly touch a lifelong dream. And it is possible thanks to InnoCentive, which, in my opinion is a unique company that allows people from around the world to participate in the creative challenges of those famous governmental organizations like NASA.

It simply remains for me to thank InnoCentive for these opportunities and to wish good luck and new success for all InnoCentive Solvers.

This post, by InnoCentive Innovation Expansion Manager Chad Carrington, shares his views from InnoCentive’s Oil & Gas Symposium in Houston, Texas on November 17th, 2010.

Hart Energy and InnoCentive co-hosted an Oil & Gas Symposium in Houston last month.  Industry leaders participated in a discussion about the power of Challenge-driven innovation, where important solutions can be delivered from unexpected sources.

The interactive session included the firsthand experience of guest speaker Oil Spill Recovery Institute (OSRI) Scott Pegau.  Using InnoCentive’s network, OSRI has access to a diverse group of more than 220,000 global Solvers to potentially help them source important solutions to some of their most difficult problems. OSRI minimizes their ongoing risk by augmenting their own innovation efforts by using InnoCentive’s structured methodology to establish a sustainable open innovation capability, where they fully leverage challenge-driven innovation for optimized solution sourcing both internally and externally. (more…)

By David Ritter, Chief Technology Officer, InnoCentive

In this post, I’d like to build on my previous comments regarding the similarities between Open Innovation and Strategic Sourcing.  I think this metaphor can help executives understand the imperatives and challenges they face when considering their innovation strategy.

To compete in the global economy, companies need to establish core capabilities that enable them to take advantage of their scale.  Strategic sourcing is a classic example – manufacturing companies aggregate their demand across their factories for materials and negotiate with vendors from a position of strength and volume.  Sometime after 1960, strategic sourcing became a competitive necessity.  Companies that make stuff in any volume absolutely had to create the organization, processes, and culture that enable strategic sourcing, or they’d be driven out of business by others that had built this capability. (more…)

InnoCentive Innovation Expansion Manager Chad Carrington spoke with E&P Editor Judy Murray about InnoCentive’s Oil & Gas Symposium in Houston, Texas on November 17th, 2010.

During last month’s Oil & Gas Symposium, E&P Editor Judy Murray made the point that as the oil and gas industry faces greater and more exacting technical challenges, it becomes more important to be able to innovate rapidly.  In a follow-up E&P article online, Judy emphasized that this reality has become increasingly difficult, with the notable gap between the aging experienced resources and those newly hired to the industry.  For more event details, see Judy Murray’s perspective in the following article,  Open collaboration takes a giant leap forward.

In an effort to mitigate the risks, the industry trend has been to organize for more effective collaboration in an effort to more efficiently address escalating field intelligence requirements.  Today, leaders are learning that timely viable solutions can be found well beyond traditional industry sources when diverse resources are engaged in a structured Challenge-driven approach.  The result is that novel solutions can be found and securely utilized across industries. E&P has been following the growing trend to explore how technology is being transferred across industries and the increasing value of solutions when motivated minds approach a problem from different directions.

Here is an E&P article about the changing landscape and InnoCentive’s participation in facilitating it: Open innovation changes the playing field. Additionally, here is an E&P blog with more thoughts about the possibilities with transferring technology: Technology transfer gets an edge.

- Chad Carrington, InnoCentive