Perspectives on Innovation

We recently posted a Challenge with the Consumer Electronics Association and the Environmental Defense Fund as part of our EDF/InnoCentive EcoChallenge Series.  The Challenge seeks financially viable, environmentally-beneficial business models based on the repurposing of recycled Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) glass from used televisions and computer monitors.  We spoke with Walter Alcorn, Vice President of Environmental Affairs for the Consumer Electronics Association about the Challenge and the importance of solving this critical environmental issue.

Hi Walter – thanks for agreeing to talk with our Solvers today.  Your Challenge, New Uses for Recycled Glass, specifically calls for new uses for CRT screens, once the standard for televisions and other types of monitors.  How big a problem is used CRT glass for the environment?

The disposition of used CRT glass is a serious resource conservation and recovery issue.  Although used CRT glass is inert while still intact as old TV and monitor tubes, CRT glass contains a significant amount of lead that could be released into the environment if processed inappropriately or mismanaged.

Safe recycling is a big deal for my industry – the consumer electronics industry. Last April we announced the eCycling Leadership Initiative with an ambitious Billion Pound Challenge to more than triple the amount of electronics recycled annually by our industry from 300 million pounds in 2010 to one billion in 2016.

These billions of pounds of recycled electronics need to be recycled responsibly and the materials put back into productive use.  By weight, more than half of all collected consumer electronics are old televisions and computer monitors, and the heaviest component of most of those products are CRTs. For decades, CRT was the technology of choice in the display industry but during the past decade, demand for CRTs has dropped drastically as newer flat-panel technologies like LCD and plasma have become affordable and widely available. Until now most CRT glass collected for recycling was cleaned up and recycled into new CRT units, but the market for new CRT displays is now nearly gone.  Uses for CRT glass with lead (e.g., funnel glass) is particularly challenging.

Why did you choose to pose this Challenge to the InnoCentive Solver Network?

We needed raise the visibility of this situation beyond the recycling industry.  New applications for CRT glass, and potentially new processing technologies are needed to appropriately recycle this material.  We are excited about the encouraging response from the Solver community with more than 250 project rooms opened in the first 2 weeks.   Hopefully this is a sign that economically and environmentally viable uses for CRT glass truly exist.

What will you do with the solution once it has been selected? Are you hoping to take it forward and would you consider working with the Solver to further develop the solution? (more…)

We recently announced the launch of an exciting new Challenge series with BeyondPolio, an initiative of the Jonas Salk Legacy Foundation and the investment firm Spencer Trask to help support the global eradication of polio. Though rare in the Western world today, wild polioviruses are still circulating in a few remaining countries in Asia and Africa, where more than 1,000 new cases of paralytic polio are diagnosed each year.  The initial Challenge in the series Increasing the Affordability of Inactivated Poliovirus Vaccine in Low- and Middle-income Countries, seeks novel ideas to significantly reduce the cost of using IPV in countries where it is currently unaffordable.  The solution to this Challenge will form the basis for a series of larger Challenges, aimed at helping to eradicate polio completely and maintain success once eradication is achieved.  We asked Dr. Peter Salk, President of the Jonas Salk Legacy Foundation, to give us some background about the state of polio eradication and this Challenge series.

Hi Peter, and thank you for speaking with us today.  Your Challenge aims to help close the final chapter on eradicating polio.  People may be surprised to learn that polio is still a problem in some parts of the world.  Can you tell us why it has been so difficult to rid the world of this disease?

Let me give you some background so that an answer to this question will make sense.

Polio has been around for a long time (an Egyptian stele from around 1400 BC shows a man with the typical signs of a leg paralyzed by polio).  The disease became a huge problem in the early part of the last century when improvements in sanitation meant that children were not exposed to polioviruses while still protected by antibodies from their mothers.  As a result, large scale epidemics took place, the worst of which in the U.S. occurred in 1952 when nearly 58,000 individuals — mostly children — were paralyzed or died.

With the development of the inactivated poliovirus vaccine (IPV), which entered use in 1955, and then the live attenuated oral poliovirus vaccine (OPV), which was initially deployed between 1959-1963, it became possible to envision eradicating polio completely.  This goal is feasible since humans are the only natural hosts for polioviruses — unlike influenza, for example, which is carried by many other animal species.

A Global Polio Eradication Initiative, spearheaded by Rotary International, WHO, the CDC and UNICEF, was undertaken beginning in 1988, relying primarily on the use of OPV, which is inexpensive and easy to administer.  Since the start of that campaign, the number of cases of paralytic polio caused by wild polioviruses has fallen from approximately 350,000 cases per year around the world to fewer than 2,000 cases a year over the last decade.  That’s a decrease of over 99%.

Why did you decide to post your Challenge to the InnoCentive Solver network?

The BeyondPolio program is the brainchild of Kevin Kimberlin, Chairman of Spencer Trask & Co., the investment firm that is helping carry out the BeyondPolio initiative in conjunction with the Jonas Salk Legacy Foundation.  Kevin had played a major role in the HIV vaccine project my father had devoted himself to in the last years of his life, and he and my father had a close and meaningful relationship.  The idea for using InnoCentive as part of the BeyondPolio initiative derived from Spencer Trask’s familiarity with InnoCentive as a result of having helped with its initial financing, and from Spencer Trask’s awareness of the track record of effectiveness of InnoCentive’s Challenge Driven Innovation programs.  The InnoCentive platform appeared to be a good way to get the word out to a large number of creative and intelligent “Solvers”, and it seemed well-suited for BeyondPolio’s series of Challenges.

OK, so if the eradication program reduced the number of cases of polio in the world caused by wild polioviruses by 99%, that means there still is another 1% of the way to go.  Why has it been so hard to get the job finished over the last 10 years?

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by Alph Bingham and Dwayne Spradlin

Clearly the notion of a challenge as a tremendously powerful and versatile tool for innovation is gaining credibility quickly.  We explored this idea in depth in our book “The Open Innovation Marketplace: Creating Value in the Challenge Driven Enterprise” published this year by FT Press.  Below and over the next few weeks we share some of the discussion on Challenges from our book and would love to have your thoughts and feedback.  Enjoy!

What Is a Challenge?

Dictionary.com defines a “challenge” as “a summons to engage in any contest” or as “a job or undertaking that is stimulating to one engaged in it.” However, it is much more. Well-constructed “Challenges” are an astonishingly powerful and uniquely effective tool for focusing the energies of multitudes of creative, inventive, talented people on the important problems facing organizations, nations, and the planet on which we live.

The Challenge is core to InnoCentive’s business, and its power has been on display now for several years. We see early, though isolated, glimpses of this approach throughout history well before InnoCentive’s founding. Striking examples of its use range from the Longitude Prize offered by British Parliament in the 1700s to the Ortiz Prize that induced Charles Lindbergh to cross the Atlantic. It has been shown to have broad and general applicability.

InnoCentive has more experience with Challenges than any organization in the world and provides an intriguing sampling of the potential of Challenges in areas as diverse as business entrepreneurship, life sciences, mathematics, and manufacturing.

Challenges can deliver breakthrough strategies or highly technical solutions and apply to every business function and every type of problem, large and small, strategic and tactical.

But Why Does It Work?

We first began to understand the Challenge as a powerful business tool a few short years ago. It was at this time that a number of key concepts were beginning to converge, namely that a Challenge exhibits three important properties. The Challenge is:

• The fundamental unit of problem solving;
• A better way to organize (and distribute) work;  and
• A powerful strategy tool.

Over the next few weeks, we will explore each of these three properties in more depth.

Warm regards,
Dwayne Spradlin and Alph Bingham

The InnoCentive Challenge referral program rewards potential Connectors like you for referring the winner of any Challenge. Use the referral tools to generate a unique referral link for any Challenge to send to your friends, family, or anyone else — if they win the Challenge, you receive a 10% referral award (up to $10,000)!

Since Ben Sikora’s blog post about his experience referring the winner of the Games for Health Challenge, subsequent Connectors have referred several more winners and shared Challenges with thousands of potential Solvers. We’ll be featuring more Connectors on the blog in the near future. For this post I’ve compiled some great advice and strategies used by successful Connectors. Follow these tips, and you can be in the running for a referral award on every Challenge — it’ll only be a matter of time until you refer a winner!

Focus on interests as well as capability

Capability is necessary but often not sufficient for solving a Challenge. Winning Connector Ben Sikora advises that “it isn’t about who you think is the smartest, most innovative, or even most creative (even though these help), it is about the interests of the people around you.” One clever Connector referred several solutions of the craft beer packaging Challenge by posting his referral link to Beer Advocate — an online community of craft beer lovers. For technical Challenges, a quick literature search will often uncover relevant papers with authors whose interests may be aligned with the Challenge.

Take advantage of viral Challenges

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What’s your favorite open InnoCentive Challenge?  Tweet about it as part of  Challenge Tuesday.  Not only will you be helping to spread the word about a great Challenge, you’ll be entered to win a prize.

Here’s how it works:

Every Tuesday, Tweet a link to your favorite open InnoCentive Challenge using the hashtag #challengetuesday and the Twitter handle @innocentive.  An example is below:

My favorite Challenge from @innocentive:  The Cathode Ray Tube Challenge: New Uses for Recycled Glass http://bit.ly/tx9kvg #challengetuesday

One Twitterer will be randomly selected each Tuesday to receive a prize from InnoCentive. Prize examples include iTunes cards, Amazon gift cards or gift certificates to Global Giving. Each Tuesday we’ll announce that week’s prize, and at the end of the day we’ll announce the winner.

We’re looking forward to seeing what Challenges get the most buzz – help us spread the word!