Perspectives on Innovation

This post was written by two Client Service’s team members who worked on the City of Boston’s SpeedBump Challenge: Daniel Kuster, Ph.D. and Michael Albarelli, Ph.D.

We recently posted a Challenge for the City of Boston, to solve the problem of locating potholes throughout the city (https://www.innocentive.com/ar/challenge/9932752).  We believe the StreetBump Challenge prototypes a very powerful way for a city to approach problem solving, by projecting the municipal problem to a global audience of citizen Solvers.   Such an approach will become increasingly attractive as data become easier/cheaper to collect and share.  As part of the InnoCentive team who worked with the City of Boston to formulate the StreetBump Challenge, we are happy to share our perspective on this type of analytical Challenge at InnoCentive in particular, and some observations about how to get practical value from data-based endeavors in an open innovation marketplace.

Potholes are everywhere, but Boston’s are particularly difficult.  The many freeze-thaw cycles provided by Boston weather, heavy traffic, and a diverse network of street features combine to make street damage a pernicious problem.  In the StreetBump Challenge, the City of Boston provides Solvers with data (acceleration, GPS position, etc) from an Android smartphone app and asks them to predict where street damage was located.  (more…)

We recently announced that the Assessment Research Centre at the University of Melbourne had posted a Reduction to Practice Challenge seeking the development of a software module to assess collaborative problem solving skills in schools. We asked Professor Patrick Griffin from the University of Melbourne to talk to us about this Challenge, Educational GUI for Collaborative Problem Solving. Patrick is the Executive Director of the ATC21S project.

Hello Patrick.  Thanks for talking to us about your Challenge. The Assessment & Teaching of 21st Century Skills (ATC21S) is an international project coordinated by the Assessment Research Centre at the University.  Can you tell us a bit more about this project and what it hopes to accomplish?

In our information-rich world, students will need not just competence in math, science and reading, but in a number of other skills that include new ways of learning with technology, new ways to solve problems, and new ways to communicate using social media. The world of education has not even begun to explore the possibilities of these new 21st-century skills. So the ATC21S project has taken on the task of developing new ways of assessing collaborative problem-solving and learning through digital networks. In doing so, we are attempting to shift the direction of assessment and teaching towards a model that is more suitable to the measurement and development of skills that people will need in the 21st century. (more…)

Today’s blog post was contributed by InnoCentive Marketing Manager Tim O’Brien.

If you’ve visited InnoCentive.com in the past week, you probably noticed that nearly every Challenge now has a referral award in addition to a Challenge award. This referral award is paid out to InnoCentive users who play a key role in the Challenge-solving process by exposing the Challenge to the person who is ultimately motivated and able to solve it.

At InnoCentive, we believe that diversity of experience can overcome the toughest Challenges. Time and time again, winning Solvers hail from backgrounds outside of the domain of the Challenges they solve. But for Seekers, lack of diversity is a serious limiting factor of innovation; after all, every organization is limited by the number of employees and contractors that it’s able to employ.

We address the diversity constraint by identifying problems that matter within Seeker organizations, formulating them as discrete Challenges, and then broadcasting those Challenges to the world. Yet, in a world of billions of internet-connected individuals, posting a Challenge on InnoCentive.com is not always sufficient for reaching the individual with the right set of experiences to develop a winning solution. Given that it’s unrealistic to expect every potential Solver to read every Challenge, we’ve recognized and responded to the need for a new role in the InnoCentive community: the Connector.

A Connector acts as an innovation catalyst, reading Challenges and then intelligently broadcasting them to potentially interested and capable audiences. By acting as a Connector, you play a vital role in the innovation process whenever you refer a Challenge to the person who ultimately solves it. Here’s how it works: Visit the Challenge Center or a Challenge summary or details page of almost any Challenge to generate and share a unique referral link to that Challenge; if you refer the winner to the Challenge with your referral link, you’ll receive a referral award in recognition of your crucial role in motivating the winning Solver to read that Challenge and submit a solution. In addition, if you introduce new Solvers to InnoCentive by referring them to Challenges before they’ve registered accounts on InnoCentive.com, you’ll earn an award for each one who wins any Challenge within a year.

One major benefit of the Challenge Referral Program is the enhanced relevance of every Challenge. Even if you’re sure you can’t solve a given Challenge on your own, it’s still worth reading the overview or details and thinking “who might be able to Solve this Challenge.” If you refer the Challenge to the right person, you’ll receive a referral award of up to $10,000 USD. Who knows, maybe just reading and considering the Challenge will prompt an unexpected ‘eureka.’ Either way, there’s never been a better time to get serious about following Challenges. To help you keep an eye on and share the latest Challenges as easily as possible, we’ve just released InnoCentive Anywhere, a free mobile app for iPhone and Android devices.

InnoCentive community members aren’t the only ones excited about this new program: “Life Technologies is very excited to be participating in InnoCentive’s referral program,” says Nigel Beard, Head of Scientific Operations of Life Technologies. “This program is designed to extend the reach of Challenges by tapping into the intellectual networks of the existing Solver community. Not only does this provide the potential to increase the number of active Solvers, but more importantly, it allows us to get these complex research Challenges in front of the best minds with the highest probability of solving them.” By referring Challenges such as “Life Grand Challenge: Twice the Accuracy of Genome Sequencing,” you could play a vital role in advancing the next generation of DNA sequencing technologies!

To get started, visit the Challenge overview page of any Challenge with a referral award (nearly all Challenges have one!). On the page, you’ll see a referral module which makes it easy to broadcast the Challenge to potential Solvers. For more information, visit Start Referring.

Please leave your comments and reactions below!

(The quest for a new name for Deutsche Boerse and the NYSE Euronext)

Some months ago the Deutsche Boerse and the New York Stock Exchange merged to become the biggest stock exchange in the world. This is a huge step in creating a global community based on fewer and more cohesive regulations (hopefully!) with a greater degree of transparency.

The new, unnamed company (jointly headquartered in Frankfurt and New York) is now in search of a name, one that represents each individual entity’s histories, nationality, culture and pride. Even though Deutsche Boerse controls 60 percent of the new exchange, there are many who feel that the “NYSE,” because of its age and reputation, should not only be reflected in the new name, but should come first.

Given the significant and high profile role a stock exchange plays in a country’s economy, and in this case two countries, plus the rest of the world, it stands to reason that this cannot be an exercise in frivolity. So what should two prideful old-timers do? They can ask their employees.

Working with Interbrand, Deutsche Boerse and the NYSE Euronext are asking their employees (6,000 plus) to submit their suggestions online to a digital suggestion box. Interbrand will help both sides of the Atlantic to sort, categorize and analyze the submissions as well as help them keep the strategic vision for the new brand at the forefront when deciding on finalists – a logistical task that we at InnoCentive are very familiar with! The goal is to have a name sometime in the summer of 2011.

It will be interesting to see what name is finally chosen. This venture could be a fascinating insight into the minds of the employees and produce some interesting monikers. InnoCentive crowdsources names from our employees – we’ve named conference rooms, the @Work platform, our product phases and even our newsletters! I can admit from personal experience that Interbrand will have a very interesting time sifting through those suggestions!

We recently had a news mention from the unlikeliest of venues – ESPN! I’m sure many of you will say the same thing we did: “ESPN, the sports network? How is that relevant?” Well, innovation is relevant in all avenues of life, and that includes business, leisure and professional sports. This brings us to ESPN, and the author’s interest in innovation, crowdsourcing and prizes.

The author begins the article with “top-tier surfing” contests at Bells Beach and Rio’s Billabong Pro, Lowers Pro’s “MVP,” Nike 6.0’s “Cash for Tricks” and Volcom’s “kick-flip on camera” challenge, where she has witnessed surfers driven to produce some “performance evolution” kicks, flips and other tricks. She notes that besides the adrenaline-rush and the chance to perform in front of their peers, cash prizes do not hurt in encouraging them to come up with innovative new moves. And why stop there she asks. Why not “ask” or crowdsource innovation within the rest of the surfing industry, like seamless, slimmer, resilient wetsuits and environmentally friendly and surfboard materials and a host of other inventions and enhancements.

Hence, the mention of InnoCentive, crowdsourcing and prize-based innovation; while the idea of prize-based innovation isn’t new, she credits the World Wide Web and InnoCentive with accelerating the use of crowdsourcing and cash prizes for “linking regular people with ideas to problems.” Have a read – the article is so well written and you don’t have to be a surfer to understand and enjoy it!