Perspectives on Innovation

As some of you may recall, back in the fall of 2007, we expanded our Challenge disciplines from two to six. Although adding Physical Science, Computer Science & Math, Engineering & Design and Business & Entrepreneurship was a cool step forward, we still weren’t sure those disciplines captured all of the “spirit” of what Solvers are passionate about. Sure, organizing Challenges by expertise makes sense: Doesn’t a Chemist want to work on Chemistry problems and doesn’t an Engineer want to work on Engineering problems? Well, the answer isn’t a simple yes or no.

First and foremost, InnoCentive Solvers, we know you are passionate human beings. Of course you are brilliant and creative, but you have told us that you also want to help the world become a better place for all of us to live. You are passionate about helping Seekers fix REAL problems that affect millions of people. You don’t just want to work on math problems or design challenges, you want to make a difference in helping solve real problems in areas that you care about. These include areas like health care in developing nations or environmentally friendly energy discovery.

As a result, we developed the “Pavillion” concept on the InnoCentive marketplace. These pavilions allow us to organize our Seeker’s Challenges into social, political and business areas of interest. Now Solvers that want to work on “CleanTech” Challenges can browse just that pavilion. Of course challenges in Pavilions still show up in appropriate technical disciplines as well. So a Challenge in CleanTech may also show up in the Engineering & Design or Physical Science disciplines. Or a Challenge in the Rockefeller pavilion may show up in Chemistry or Life Science too. This gives you flexibility is searching Challenges by technical discipline or by the “cause” in which they are most personally interested in.

Currently there are four Pavilions on the InnoCentive Marketplace and we will be adding more in the future.

The Rockefeller Foundation
Clean Tech and Renewable Energy
Global Health
Public Policy and Citizens in Action

You are the crowd….if you have any suggestions for new Pavilions we would love to hear from you. Comment on this post, or contact us, we will get your idea in the queue!

Tom

As the road warrior member of the InnoCentive blogging team, today I would like to share with you a really cool event I was fortunate to be a part of last week.

On the campus of The Ohio State University (yes, that is the proper way to describe the Buckeye university) the Resource Interactive Group held their annual iCitizen forum on marketing in the digital age. Attendees included brand managers, marketing communications leaders and product marketers from large retail, consumer products and manufacturing companies.

The day featured a bevy of panelists and presenters that all focused their various marketing expertise on the power of the crowd and using cutting edge web methods to execute traditional marketing activities ranging from research to product placement to brand building.

Now many of you may be wondering what InnoCentive was doing at a digital marketing conference given we are primarily known for helping solve tough scientific and technology challenges. The answer is really twofold:

1. Even though our Solvers work on solving intricate science and technology problems, their answers and solutions are really imbedded into a larger product development project. Often our Seekers have trouble solving discreet problems within a higher product development effort and look to our Solvers to find that breakthrough idea that will be them the market quicker and cheaper than usual. As product managers, brand managers and marketing professionals, the attendees all have a vested interested in getting new products to market faster and less expensively.

2. With the great results of our recent InnoCentive Video Challenge, we have proven that our Solver community has a lot of creative marketing ideas and experience. The market is beginning to see InnoCentive and its Solvers as a great resource to solve marketing and business challenges as well as the traditional science and technology problems we know so well. We expect this marketing category to catch on quickly and are looking for more solvers in this area. If you are a current Solver and know some marketing and creative types that may not be aware of InnoCentive, please let them know about us. We now have an official Refer-A-Friend program that allows you to refer your friends and share in awards that they receive.

You can read some more about iCitizen and our participation in the following blogs:

Raman Coke
iCitizen Recap

Advergirl
iCitizen: Call to Open Your Brand

That’s all for now - and if you see me on an airplane, train, taxi or street corner - be sure to say “HI!”

Tom

Last week was quite a travel adventure for me as I winded across the US and had meetings with innovation leaders from all over the world.We started out in Los Angeles attending the Milken Institute Global Conference. Thought leaders from around the globe gathered to discuss the most pressing issues of the day as well as the newest in business and technical innovations. Present among the crowd were Sumner Redstone, Bill Bennett, Governor Schwarzenegger, Maria Bartiromo, Michael Milken and many others. At the conference we had the opportunity to participate in a couple of panel sessions focused on building WE rather than ME organizations.

InnoCentive’s Board Member Barry Libert and his company, mZinga were our gracious hosts at the event, and their platform for workplace and customer community development combined with InnoCentive for a great story. Open innovation was a hot topic all across the conference and the turnout for you panel was so great people were turned away at the door due to room capacity constraints! In one session we used the SunNight Solar Challenges as an example of Open Innovation and we gave out a few dozen of the now famous orange BOGO flashlights. It was fascinating to see the response of the audience when we talked about our Solver community and the creative solutions they bring to the table. I had the pleasure to describe some of our great Solvers and weave success stories like the Oil Spill Recovery Challenge, Rockefeller Challenges in front of world business leaders.  

After Milken, we headed over to New York and DC for meetings with two very large potential Seeker Clients.   Both of these organizations could be considered “old economy” type organizations that on the surface don’t seem very “innovative” - let alone innovating “openly.” Much to our surprise, our prize based innovation business model is becoming quite acceptable even in these organizations that historically have had a “not invented here” mentality.

One of the interesting sub topics that continues to be debated among larger organizations is the amount of “cloaking” around the identity of the Seeker and the purpose of the challenge. If you are going to leverage Open Innovation, then the question always becomes; “What are the risks of being open versus the rewards of diversified thought?” The risks people are concerned about are exposure of their identity, problems they can’t solve which may expose weakness and the disclosure of the product development pipeline. These are all very valid risks to be sure.  Of course the other side of the argument is value of getting solutions from the CROWD is invaluable and often produces results never before achieved internally.  As you can imagine the attitudes on this topic run as wide as Pacific Ocean.   

One advocate of “lower cloaking” came up with a great line.  It goes like this:  “Abject paranoia and open innovation are mutually exclusive.”

For you open innovation advocates on this blog, go ahead and use that line royalty free!

Tom