Perspectives on Innovation

Excerpted from Complexity Digest 2010-12 by Bruce Hannon

Life after the synthetic cell, Nature

Summary: Nature asked eight synthetic-biology experts about the implications for science and society of the “synthetic cell” made by the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI). The institute’s team assembled, modified and implanted a synthesized genome into a DNA-free bacterial shell to make a self-replicating Mycoplasma mycoides.

• Source: Life after the synthetic cell, DOI: 10.1038/465422a, Nature 465, 422″424, 2010/05/26

Inductive Game Theory and the Dynamics of Animal Conflict, PLoS Comput Biol

Excerpt: Persistent conflict is one of the most important contemporary challenges to the integrity of society and to individual quality of life. Yet surprisingly little is understood about conflict. (…) (more…)

We recently announced our collaboration with The Economist’s Ideas Economy event series to launch the Economist-InnoCentive Challenge on 21st Century Cyber-Schools. InnoCentive is very excited about this partnership.  The Economist is  trying to solve some of the big problems plaguing mankind – which is exactly what we’re doing.  We do it through our global network of Solvers and they are doing it through their Ideas Economy Event series and the reach they have with their subscribers.  Both audiences contain some of the world’s most intelligent, highly engaged thinkers who are motivated to make a difference.  Given both audiences, along with our expertise in the process of Challenge based innovation, it makes perfect sense for us to join forces.

We asked InnoCentive CEO Dwayne Spradlin to provide his thoughts on this Challenge, and explain some of the benefits that we expect to see from this partnership:

Hi Dwayne – thanks for talking to us about the InnoCentive-Economist Partnership and the Cyber-Schools Challenge.

Absolutely – glad to have the opportunity.

What was inspiration for this particular Challenge?

The idea for this actual Challenge and for future Challenges will be driven by the theme of each of the Ideas Economy events.  These are all themes that we feel strongly about addressing.  The first key conference theme is Human Potential.  At the event, participants will discuss and debate how to boost human productivity by harnessing the potential of individuals and societies.  The Challenge addresses this via expanding education to people who are currently not able to access it. The Challenge winner will touch upon global education best practices, free market solutions to education, the testing dilemma, and how online learning will transform our schools.

In addition, we believe that this  is a Challenge that just about every attendee of the upcoming Economist Conference has both a stake in solving and something to offer. We have all been students at one time or another – so we all can relate to the Challenge from our own perspective. (more…)

In an effort to improve your InnoCentive experience and get you the answers you need, we have made some upates to our Message Center.

You’ll be able to see the difference when you open your next project room – specifically, a logical division of sent vs. received messages.

To see the new Message Center, click on the Messages Tab or the Messages button on the right side of your project room. You will then be able to view messages for this Challenge from your Inbox or Sent tab. We think you’ll find this interface much easier to use.

As always, we value your feedback – please let us know if there is anything else we can do to enhance your InnoCentive Solving experience!

We recently announced that we would be partnering with Nature Publishing Group (NPG) to offer InnoCentive Challenges to NPG readers and clients.  Today we announced a significant milestone in this partnership, the creation of the nature.com Open Innovation pavilion.  I asked Dan Penny, Head of Business Development for NPG to talk to us about the significance of this relationship.

Hi Dan – thanks for being with us today. We’re very excited about partnering with Nature Publishing Group (NPG).  Can you tell us a bit of the history of NPG?

Nature has a long and illustrious history – it was launched in 1869, just ten years after Darwin’s Origin of Species was published – and indeed the first Nature article was written by a strong advocate of Darwin’s theories, Thomas Huxley. It’s great to work somewhere that has that historical context, and although the world has changed a lot in 140 years, we try to make sure that Nature still maintains its important role in drawing attention to the research that shows us how the world works.
Nature Publishing Group – we know it as NPG – now publishes over 70 journals and also offers online databases and services to our scientist community, including daily news and features from Nature News and our careers service NatureJobs. We’re very excited that just this year, Scientific American became the heart of NPG’s newly-formed consumer media division, meeting the needs of the general public.

Can you tell us why NPG was interested in a partnership with InnoCentive?

NPG is recognised as a company which believes very strongly in being innovative in its own right. I used to work for a consultancy which frequently made mention of NPG’s innovative character, but you have to work here to really see how much innovation is going on. It goes back a long way though – NPG’s original, 140-year-old mission statement talks about providing scientists with the opportunity of discussing “the various Scientific questions which arise from time to time”, and so we’ve developed several innovative services to help our readers do that – including Nature Network, our online networking platform for scientists and Connotea, a file sharing resource which won an award for publishing innovation. So I guess our interest in InnoCentive starts with its potential to nurture innovation.

What do you think is the benefit of the partnership to both the Nature user community and the InnoCentive Solver base?

The NPG partnership with InnoCentive will give our user community the opportunity to exercise their knowledge and expertise in solving problems which are out there, but which have stayed private until now. All scientists would like to see practical uses for their research – InnoCentive provides a greater opportunity for that to happen. We see provision of Challenge information to our readers in the same way as our jobs board – providing our readers with opportunities to develop themselves and, who knows, maybe their careers. The existing InnoCentive Solver base should benefit too – I think NPG’s increased involvement with open innovation will encourage others to accept it as a valid way to do research. We all know that traditional culture can be deeply embedded at large corporations – but hopefully Nature’s activities here will make some companies take notice. (more…)

On June 8^th and 9^th The X PRIZE Foundation, in partnership with BT Global Services, the John Templeton Foundation and the United Nations Office for Partnerships, will host incentive2innovate (i2i) – a two-day conference that will put c-suite executives face-to-face with some of the word’s greatest innovators to discuss two powerful yet underutilized tools: open collaboration and incentive prizes. During a series of intimate sessions, attendees will have an opportunity to build relationships with peers and engage in discussions focused on how open collaboration and incentive prize competitions can be leveraged to create new ideas that will benefit an organization’s bottom line.

Dwayne Spradlin, InnoCentive President and Chief Executive Officer, and Alpheus Bingham, Ph.D, InnoCentive Founder and Board of Directors member, are two of the conference’s featured speakers. Others include Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor-in-chief, Huffington Post; Filippo Passerini, chief information and global services officer, Procter & Gamble; and Dan Tapscott, Author, “Growing Up Digital: The Rise of the Net Generation.” Dan Tapscott will deliver the opening keynote speech.

Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, chairman and CEO, The X PRIZE Foundation, joins us to share more about the upcoming conference.

Hi Peter.  Thanks for talking with us today.  Can you tell us, what is the goal for the i2i conference?

The X PRIZE Foundation is a recognized leader in bringing about “radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity.” The i2i conference is an extension of our efforts to create such breakthroughs in the business, government and nonprofit worlds. The conference goal is to showcase and drive dialogue around two powerful yet underutilized tools that can create fundamental breakthroughs within an organization’s walls to positively impact their bottom line performance, the economy and the world.

The X PRIZE Foundation, BT and the John Templeton Foundation have seen first-hand how these tools can be used to bring about radical changes for humanity, spur the development and growth of new industries and generate innovative ideas and technologies from individuals across the globe. We want to increase awareness and usage of these tools within the business, government and nonprofit communities to help them improve the pace, cost and quality of innovation. We’ve brought together a dynamic group of innovators who, through a series of breakout sessions, will do exactly that. (more…)