Perspectives on Innovation

By Dwayne Spradlin, InnoCentive CEO

LEARNINGS FROM THE BP OIL SPILL

As many of you know, the InnoCentive team and InnoCentive’s Global Solver Community mobilized quickly in the earliest days of the BP Oil Spill Crisis in order to drive ideas and solutions into the hands of emergency responders and British Petroleum. Recognizing the seriousness of the situation, we literally had calls out for solutions within days. And clearly our Global Solver Community stepped up to meet the challenge. Thousands of solutions were received from all over the world addressing technical solutions to the spill, approaches to recovering the oil, and remediating the environmental and human health impact. Their efforts were incredible and validate the potential of crowdsourcing and open innovation to provide solutions on demand in even the most challenging situations.

You may also recall, that after months of working with BP representatives, government officials, and others, it was clear that British Petroleum would not agree to coordinate efforts with InnoCentive. BP would not answer technical questions from our Solvers and would not agree to review proposed solutions. BP did eventually open up its own call for ideas and proposals. But their approach was far too broad, unfocused, and lacked sufficient transparency (particularly related to accurate technical data at the spill site) to elicit truly valuable submissions. Some argued they were simply responding to media pressure. Regardless, it was likely too little and too late to be make any real difference.

Notwithstanding BP’s lack of engagement, we at InnoCentive were so inspired by the early efforts that we promptly announced a commitment to provide our services pro bono in other qualifying crisis situations and we quickly launched the Emergency Response 2.0 Pavilion. We did this because as an organization we know it to be simply the right thing to do. Of course we’d need to understand when and how to action that commitment, particularly difficult given the inherent chaos and complexity that surrounds crisis situations by definition. (more…)

Clearly, we will be reviewing the chain of events, doing post mortems, and second guessing for a long time to come all the events before during, and after the oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico. There will be many points of view and they will differ greatly based upon your perspective. Corporations’ views will differ from environmentalists, lawyers’ will differ from engineers. And Gulf States inhabitants may have very different views than those from the Beltway in Washington D.C.

One area of focus will undoubtedly be whether we used all the tools at our disposal to respond to the crisis quickly and effectively. One might ask “Why wouldn’t we?” In reality, the discussion needs to be “What prevented us from doing so?”

More to come in later blog posts, but for now I thought it would be an opportune time to share some early reflections related to this oil crisis on this topic from my point of view. In particular, as we worked to energize problem solvers from all over the world to drive solutions for BP and the oil spill cleanup efforts, we and the world more broadly found it very difficult to pierce the corporate veil at BP to provide assistance. Even when BP provided vehicles for suggestions to be considered, it was clear that this was not a primary strategy. Most were not process, and frankly, the world was never given the transparency or tools by BP to fully participate in the process in the first place. Why was this so difficult and what can we learn? (more…)

The days and weeks pass, and, until last week, oil continued to blast upwards from the bottom of the Gulf. As time marches on, the pace of new solutions has slowed as well, yet we still continue to receive submissions from you about how to stop the gushing oil and protect the coastline.

With the end of the Gulf Oil Spill Challenge in sight, we wanted to showcase an innovative solution that was submitted by a student from an Advanced Placement (AP) Environmental Sciences class from high school in New Jersey.

What I love about this piece is that it came from the leaders of tomorrow (students), it’s simple, and it focuses on the future (the clean up) even while many people and politicians remain focused on the past (blame) or the present (capping the wellhead). Here is the submission:

“Recently in our AP Environmental class, my teacher came in and told us about the oil spill.

He then told us about your website and began having us work on the clean up crisis of the oil.

All of the students partnered up and started to try out their ideas, if they had any.

I then came up with the idea to use baking soda, which led to some good results, and which ultimately led to an expansion of the idea:

We discovered that baking soda would create tar balls for a long enough period of time that you could place something underneath them, collect them, and drag them out of the water in tact.

So then my friend and I tried placing nylon stocking on the oil to see if it would allow the oil to pass through, and it worked.

Nylon stockings allow the oil to seep through, but they block the clean water.

The result of our tests culminated in our final idea, which actually cleaned up the water to near perfect quality:

• Place the stocking on top of the oil (the oil passes through this porous barrier)
• Sprinkle baking soda on the stocking and the oil
• Wait up to one minute
• Pull the stockings out of the water, which collects the tar balls and leaves the water nearly completely clean

We tested this in class on a large scale and we were able to accomplish getting the water clean.

I hope this idea helps in the crisis and we wish you the best of luck!”

Greetings, InnoCentive Solvers—

Quick note to inform you that we’ve posted two new Emergency Response 2.0 Challenges around the Gulf Oil Spill disaster: Emergency Response 2.0: Oil Detection on Ocean Surfaces; and Emergency Response 2.0: Oil Collection in Gulf of Mexico.

Innovative solutions to these Challenges will help the organizers and crews clean the water and beaches in the short and medium terms.

For the Oil Detection on Ocean Surfaces Challenge we’re looking for new ways to improve the conventional imaging processes that are currently being deployed, i.e., satellite radar, visual, LIDAR, etc. We are also looking for ways to improve aerial tools aboard helicopters and aircrafts, and, to a lesser degree, surface spotting techniques.

For the Oil Collection in the Gulf of Mexico Challenge we’re looking for commercially available equipment, technology and ideas that would enable the rapid conversion of commercial vessels (e.g., fishing) into oil recovery units.

On the back-end, a board of advisers, currently being assembled, will review the submissions from both Challenges.

That said we also want to take advantage of the perspectives, skills, and talents in the InnoCentive network. In order to accomplish that, we have activated the discussion board within the project rooms.

Please take a look as soon as you can.

Best,

JD

The days and weeks pass, and oil continues to blast upwards from the bottom of the Gulf. And as time marches on, we continue to receive submissions from you about how to stop the gushing oil and protect the coastline. Because of the importance and magnitude of this disaster, and because we want to keep you apprised of various InnoCentive activity around this Challenge, we are glad to share during the coming weeks the details of several key solutions and ideas we’ve received from you. Today’s post is a summary of a submission by Senthil Kumar.

The aim of this solution is to minimize the oil’s environmental impact to the ocean, land, and life. Coconut Coir (CC) is the fibrous layer outside the coconut shell. It is used around the globe in the manufacture of soil treatments, rope, and doormats.

CC can be used to absorb the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. CC is an excellent bio-absorbent, used for horticultural applications and purposes. It also has very good water retention properties.

The individual fiber cells are narrow and hollow, with thick walls made of Lignin and Cellulose. The phenolic groups in lignin are responsible for initiating the absorbent property. Lignocellulosic materials, such as CC, containing a higher amount of phenolic groups are expected to be more effective scavengers for removal of oils and hydrocarbon from the environment.

CC can absorb as much as 50 times its weight in oil.

Further, CC can be treated with keratin protein (found naturally in goat hair) to improve its oleophilic and aquaphobic properties. The chemically modified novel CC pith can be used for oil absorption and to absorb metals (chromium, lead, zinc, etc.) and hydrocarbons, and its absorbing capacity may increase up to 70%.

The advantages of using CC over other natural and synthetic products are many: it is a low cost solution; it is eco-friendly and bio-degradable; it is 100% natural and widely available (the total world CC fiber production is 250,000 tons—India produces 60% of the total world supply of white coir fiber, while Sri Lanka produces 36% of the total world brown fiber output).