Perspectives on Innovation

Today’s blog post was written by Tara Crawford, a member of a student team of undergraduates at University of Ottawa that received an award for the Challenge “Nuclear Test Monitoring and Verification Methods“. Tara discusses how an InnoCentive Challenge was incorporated in to an undergraduate course, and how she and her teammates were inspired to collaborate and develop a winning solution to this real-world problem. The team members were Veronica Santos, Cody Sarch, Phil O’Hearn, Christine Achampong, and Tara Crawford.

We solved the Challenge “Nuclear Test Monitoring and Verification Methods” as a group in a fourth-year Biotechnology course this past year. The criteria for the course was to invent something and file for a patent. Our professor also urged us to look for online Challenges.

We looked at the InnoCentive website and thought that “Nuclear Test Monitoring and Verification Methods” was a good opportunity for us to apply our science background as well as learn new areas (we are a group of five students in Biochemistry, Biomedical Science/Chemistry, Biopharmaceutical science, and chemical engineering). We researched many experts in the field and invited them to be guest speakers in our class so that we could ask them questions about the topics we were trying to apply to our solution. We needed to expand our knowledge into the radionuclides that we wanted to detect and the methods currently available to do that, as well as other possibilities that had not been investigated yet.

Our class consisted of 3 hours of lecture time a week where we initially learnt about patenting, intellectual property, and were able to brainstorm with our groups.  Then we also had an extra 1.5 hours a week to meet in an informal lecture setting and discuss our progress. Outside of class time our group met 1-2 times a week to work more specifically on our solution. This involved a lot of brainstorming and allowed us to bring together all of our individual research.

The experience was a great one for us. We learnt a new way of learning since it was a hands off approach by our professor. Throughout our undergraduate degree we had taken many courses that were very structured, but this allowed us to do whatever topic we wanted. We improved our team building skills and really got an idea of how our previous knowledge could be applied to the real world. We all really enjoyed it, although it required a lot of self discipline to ensure we met deadlines!

I was privileged recently to be asked to participate as a subject matter expert on prizes and prize design for a video with Todd Park, CTO of the US Department of Health and Human Services, as well as others driving prizes within HHS. The video, embedded below, is intended to help educate HHS and all of its departments on the power of prizes as well as to encourage best practices. Todd and his team are taking a bold and sophisticated approach. Supported by President Obama’s Open Government initiative and the reauthorization of the America COMPETES Act this past year, HHS is targeting critical innovation needs, cost effective solutions, improved citizen engagement, and generating important learnings to be shared with other agencies in government adopting these approaches. We look forward to hearing about exciting new challenge and prize based programs coming out of HHS in the coming years!

The HHS website on Challenges and Competitions is an excellent information resource that will be valuable inside and outside of agency.

Recently Alph Bingham presented a short but impactful “Flash of Genius” session at the Economist Ideas Economy: Information event in Santa Clara.  In his speech, he draws the distinction between searching data and searching wisdom.  Taken to the next level, how do you find the uniquely prepared mind, who can answer your question only if you ask it at the right moment?  Using the classic story of Archimedes and the bathtub, Alph illustrates how asking the right question at the right time can mean the difference between “it’s not possible” and “Eureka!” View the video in its entirety below.

Today we announced a new collaboration with the world renowned Cleveland Clinic, to advance medical and healthcare innovation.  The cornerstone of the partnership is the Cleveland Clinic Medical Innovation Pavilion, which will be home to a series of Challenges aimed at providing new advances in patient care.  Dr. Paul DiCorleto, Ph.D., Sherwin-Page Chair of the Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute, led the initiative from the Cleveland Clinic side, bringing together a team of basic and clinical researchers with the aim of reaching outside of the traditional innovation process to uncover new ideas that could change the way the world approaches medical research.  We asked Dr. DiCorleto to give us his thoughts about the partnership and the role of open innovation in health care.

Hello Dr. DiCorleto, and thank you for speaking with us today. Can you tell us a bit about Cleveland Clinic and the mission of the Lerner Research Institute?

Cleveland Clinic is unique in that from its very beginning in 1921, the founders believed that research and education belonged with clinical care.  These elements remain in our mission statement today, and research is viewed as an integral part of patient care.  At the Lerner Research Institute, our goal is to understand the underlying causes of human diseases and to develop new treatments and cures.

Cleveland Clinic is a world renowned research institute.  Can you tell us about some of the specific innovations that have been developed since the organization’s founding? (more…)

Last week, InnoCentive’s CEO Dwayne Spradlin participated in an event sponsored by Crowdsortium at the Microsoft New England Research & Development Center (NERD) in Cambridge MA. Crowdsortium bills itself as “a group of crowdsourcing industry practitioners that have self-organized to advance the crowdsourcing industry through best practices, education, data collection and public dialog.”

To a packed audience, Harvard Professor Karim Lakhani delivered a compelling keynote speech on the history and future of crowdsourcing, followed by a panel which included Dwayne, Jeff Howe (who was widely credited with inventing the term “crowdsourcing”), Doron Reuveni (CEO of uTest), and Daniel Sullivan (President of Appswell). Jim Savage, a partner at Longworth Venture Partners, moderated the panel.

The folks at uTest have kindly posted the videos online. Click on a link to view:

     * Keynote: Accessing the Ideas Cloud via Crowdsourcing

     * Panel, part 1: Crowdsourcing Defined

     * Panel, part 2: The Crowdsourcing Business Model & Sweet Spots

     * Panel, part 3: Managing the Crowd & Crowdsourcing Challenges

Many thanks to the Crowdsortium team, as well as the sponsors – Appswell and uTest – for putting on a great event. The InnoCentive team looks foward to participating in future events.