Perspectives on Innovation

I have some exciting news to share with you today.  As a result of all your feedback last year, we have multiple website updates planned this year.  The first update is now live and appears in the “My InnoCentive” area of the website.  For Solvers, this is the section of the website you see once you’ve logged in.  We focused on 5 key changes that we hope will make the website easier to use and more informative: (more…)

Our Client Services team reviews thousands of Challenge Solutions each year and they asked me to share with you some of the tips they’ve come up with based on their experience. Please feel free to leave a comment for me if you find one of these particularly helpful, or if you have any of your own to share.

Tip #1: You can download the Solution Submission Form and Solver Submission Guideline documents for your use. To access these documents, click on the “Submit a Solution” button located within the Project Room of a Challenge.

Tip #2: Carefully re-read the Challenge description and make sure that you completely understand both the goal of the Challenge, the Technical Requirements, and the required deliverables as stated under the heading “Project Criteria” in the Challenge statement.

Tip #3: As a rule of thumb, the most successful submissions are organized as small articles, like you might see in a newspaper. We recommend starting with a Summary or Introduction that describes the essence of your idea in one short paragraph stating precisely what your submission is all about.

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I recently received this piece from Gabriel Eichler, one of our Client Services team members, and I wanted to share it with you all. He goes into detail on the important role that InnoCentive plays as a broker between the Seeker and you the Solver:

As most of our clients and members of our community already know, InnoCentive plays an important role in brokering Open Innovation interactions between Seeker organizations and you, our network of talented Solvers. Brokering such transactions is difficult since InnoCentive serves as a two-way firewall between the Seeker organization and Solver by keeping all parties anonymous throughout the process while simultaneously ensuring the integrity of the interaction. It occurred to me, however, that since most individuals interact with InnoCentive as either a Seeker or a Solver (and rarely both), they are unfamiliar with the actions undertaken by InnoCentive’s Client Services Team on behalf of both parties. To improve the understanding of both our Seekers and Solvers, I’ve dedicated this blog entry to a brief discussion on how InnoCentive’s Client Services Team supports these innovation interactions.

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As I’m sure some of you have noticed, InnoCentive has been adding to our list of Pavilions to help support our commitment of offering you the chance to submit Solutions that can help make our world a better place. In yesterday’s Boston Globe, on the front page of the Business Section, reporter Carolyn Johnson discusses some of these Pavilions, in particular the one dedicated to Clean Technology. I recommend you take a look; it discusses open innovation in general and mentions some other interesting crowdsourcing projects you should all check out.

Last week, we officially launched the Clean Tech and Renewable Energy Pavilion, featuring eco-friendly Challenges. As we mentioned in the press release, in 2007, more than $3B was committed to clean technology companies by venture capitalists, a 100% increase from 2006. The Pavilion addresses this growth and the critical need for innovative products and services that will have a positive impact on the Earth’s environment. A sponsor, the Barr Foundation, has posted the Boston Innovation Challenge on the Pavilion. This is a Barr Foundation initiative in collaboration with the Cambridge Energy Alliance, a public-private collaborative formed to reduce energy usage in the City of Cambridge, Massachusetts, within five years. The Challenge offers a prize of $30,000 for the design of a radically energy-efficient method of cooling and dehumidifying residential and small commercial spaces.

Today, we are officially launching the Global Health Pavilion featuring a Challenge requesting Solutions to fix the flawed US healthcare system. I encourage you all to submit your ideas!

Until next time,
Lisa

What a wonderful day to announce the InnoCentive Top Solver Awards for 2007! I think it’s fitting that we launched the blog the same day that we honored the top Solvers, because after all this blog is devoted to our Solver community.

Announcing these awards is particularly bittersweet for me as in my role as Vice President of Client Services I have the opportunity to interact with most of our Solvers and these 11 individuals (yes, it was too difficult to round it down to 10) really stood out on top. These Solvers go to the heart of our mission statement they represent the human creativity and intelligence that makes our model work. Watching our Solvers in action and seeing these bright minds at work is truly gratifying.

Out of over 100 winning solvers last year, 11 Solvers top the leader board by either grossing at least $50,000 or by solving multiple Challenges in 2007. Of course we did have a couple of over-achievers in the group who met both criteria. Nikolay Barashkov, Ed Melcarek, Wenhui Zhang, Ming Zhou, Anatoly Chernyshev, Hegui Hu He, Sekhar Konjeti, James Mitchell, Dr. Ammanamanchi Radhakrishna, Eugeny Savin and Giorgia Sgargetta.

Each Top Solver will receive a crystal award and be recognized on the new “Top Solver” section of our website. From engineers and scientists to creative entrepreneurs, our Top Solvers are as diverse in their vocation as they are geographically – representing 7 countries. For more background on the winners, click here.

Lisa