I’m a road warrior.  I’ve spent a career expanding businesses to remote corners of the world and have been fortunate to discover innovation and intellectual curiosity in the most unexpected of places.  From the rain forests of Brazil to the deserts of Dubai, I’ve learned that we all share a need to solve problems.  We all want to make our worlds better.  And we all want to connect with others who challenge us.

This is why joining InnoCentive has been so fulfilling for me.  As Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing, I’m tasked with expanding our global footprint to increase the innovation capacity of organizations around the world.  This means not only ensuring that our Solver network comprises a diverse mix of individuals from as many different backgrounds as possible, but also providing problems for our Solvers to work on that reflect issues they may not have encountered before.

Over the past few months, we’ve been actively formalizing partnerships to help us extend our reach in strategic geographies.   In Q2, we selected Innovabia, an Arabian Advanced Systems company, to help us bring new Seekers onboard in the Middle East and North Africa. Innovabia is headquartered in Dubai, UAE, and Riyadh, KSA, and has a deep understanding of the business needs in this area. We participated in a formal kick off with our first corporate KSA client, SABIC at an Innovabia/AAS hosted reception and dinner in Riyadh.  InnoCentive CEO Dwayne Spradlin, pictured at the event, pledged a dual effort to expand the Solver and Seeker communities in the region.

Also in Q2, Innovia joined forces with InnoCentive as a partner in South America. Headquartered in Brazil, they will work to expand the Seeker and Solver presence in Argentina, Chile, and Brazil.  In Q3, InnoCentive helped kick off a new partnership in Colombia by participating in an Innovation Day, sponsored by our partner, Tecnova. Over 750 people attended the event and were very enthusiastic about the address given by InnoCentive’s VP of Government Jon Fredrickson. Tecnova will provide solutions throughout Colombia and Peru.

India has always provided a rich source of Solvers to the InnoCentive network. In recent months, we have moved to further to expand the Solver as well as the Seeker base in this diverse and vibrant country. 2010-2020 has been declared “the Decade of Innovation” in India and we are excited to be at the forefront of this initiative with our new partner, EREHWON Consulting.  As the InnoCentive partner in India, EREHWON will help expand exposure to InnoCentive in industry, government, and education throughout the country. To kick off the partnership, InnoCentive joined EREHWON at a recent innovation day for Petro Federation of India (PetroFed), held on October 19^th in New Delhi.  Participation in this event, via a formal presentation and more informal networking with attendees gave us a new appreciation for the level of potential innovation capacity in this region.

I’m very excited about what can be accomplished by expanding innovation capability in South America, the Middle East and India.  We’ve carefully chosen partners with that we think best understand the innovation needs of their areas and can help us serve those areas well.  We look forward to welcoming our new Seekers and Solvers from around the world!

By Dwayne Spradlin, CEO, InnoCentive

I recently attended NASCAR Racing School as a birthday present from my family. And it was an incredible experience. In the midst of the searing Texas heat, I was given several hours of instruction on both the car and the rules of the road. Somehow, Texas Motor Speedway looks less daunting on television than when you’re sitting in an actual racing car. Did I call it a car? My mistake. It is a rocket engine with a steering wheel. And the banked areas of the track have a much more severe incline than you could imagine. I must say that even though I pride myself on being even keeled, my heart was pounding.

The highlight of the school is taking several laps around the track at whatever top speed you feel comfortable with. In reality, you follow an experienced driver, so when you are ready to go faster, you signal to the car in front of you by coming within a few yards of their car, which is the sign to accelerate – both terrifying and invigorating at 140 MPH (not actually sure why a headset isn’t a better idea).

I grew up learning to drive near Chicago and I assure you, I-94 is not sufficient coursework for being a NASCAR driver. Although it felt like an eternity, I was driving on the roadway for less than 30 minutes. My top speed? Just under 150 miles per hour, not even close to the speeds professionals must manage every day. This was the adrenaline rush of a lifetime!

Adrenaline or not, stepping on the gas was not a natural act. Every fiber of your being senses danger because, in your head, you know that man should not be going this fast. There was an ever present fear that something bad was right around the next bend. Self-preservation and fear of the unknown are hard to overcome because they are instinct. Professional drivers must have a certain skill set, including a level of fearlessness.

The same is true of change agents within organizations. They know that the organization conforms to a certain set of rules. The safety margins are built in and the performance of the vehicle is well understood. Standard operation procedures, culture and management systems ensure that; employees follow their “experienced drivers” to reach a desired destination at their comfortable speed. To go outside that comfort zone is to take an organization into new territory, to push the comfort level. Suggesting an organization can deliver higher performance levels is suggesting that current systems are inadequate. Pulling ahead puts you right in the sights of all the other cars on the track, signaling to all the spectators that those other cars are falling behind. And those other cars are not going to exit the track. They are going to fight to keep things just as they were. Although challenging the status quo within an organization may not feel life threatening, it may feel career threatening.

Open innovation change agents in corporations today know exactly how this feels. Quite honestly, the stories are all the same. Yield arguments are met with risk arguments (fear of the unknown). Money requests for new innovation programs fail to materialize because returns cannot be guaranteed (fear the programs may actually work). Addressing a “not invented here” culture, compensation systems and closed attitudes are met with apathy and passive aggression (fear we may lose control of management systems we understand today). The list goes on and on.

My advice to organizations is this: step on the gas. Organizations need the next class of leadership to be fearless. There is always risk on the track, but the spoils go to the winners, the drivers that push the limits. Let the fearless break some of the rules and accelerate into the next turn. Let them nudge the cars in front of them and accept a few setbacks along the way. Better, faster and cheaper innovation—which is often achieved through the adoption of open innovation—will make or break your organization in the future.

And for the change agents? Prove yourself. Take some risks. Be prepared to execute and deliver. Over time, if current leadership is not lined up behind you, there are many other organizations looking for that extra nudge in the form of an effective guide to open innovation to help push them into the winners circle. They recognize that winning will require perseverance, dedication, precision and fearlessness. This is a rare combination indeed, but a combination that is vital for organizations intent on adapting to innovation realities in the new millennium.

As many of our Solvers know, we’ve done some pretty interesting work with the government. In January 2010, NASA’s Johnson Space Center launched an open innovation pavilion on InnoCentive.com. Of NASA’s initial seven Challenges – ranging from protecting astronauts and equipment in space from solar flares to keeping food fresh during long space missions – nearly 3,000 of our Solvers from around the world participated, and more than 350 solutions were proposed. NASA designated full or partial monetary awards for all seven Challenges, and the average time-to-solution for each of the Challenges was only four months.

I always liked this quote from Solver Yury Bodrov, who was rewarded for his submission to NASA’s Improved Food Packaging Challenge: “I was not sure I would be successful, but having NASA scientists evaluate my work was a primary motivation…It is a dream to be recognized by the scientific level of NASA quality.” 

More recently, in March 2011, InnoCentive and the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) announced a collaboration to advance innovation in military research. Through this partnership, the AFRL has successfully solved Challenges, including methods for dropping humanitarian aid without injury to people on the ground and stopping a fleeing vehicle without damaging the vehicle or the driver. The AFRL has since launched new Challenges, most recently Fast Rope Glove Device, currently open to the public and seeks innovative ways for military personnel to descend quickly from a helicopter in hostile situations.

Let’s face it: While we consider all of our Challenges to be important, there’s something cool about participating in NASA, AFRL, and other Challenges posted by government agencies. They spark our collective imaginations and enable us to truly reach for the stars. Stay tuned for other agencies to launch new Challenges on InnoCentive.com in the coming months.

We’d like to engage our crowd to vote for a panel featuring the CEOs of  TopCoder and InnoCentive, Jack Hughes and Dwayne Spradlin, along with Jake Ward of Popular Science who will be moderating the panel.

The proposed panel, titled “Open Innovation: Millions of Us Solving Problems,” will discuss how open innovation and crowdsourcing can transform organizations, either through a breakthrough ‘eureka‘ idea or continuous and incremental improvement of a product or service. The panel will discuss what companies from Netflix to NASA to Toyota have gained from putting their biggest Challenges out in front of the general public, and how attendees can do the same. It will also uncover the key issues organizations need to address when incorporating open innovation communities into their own business plans, and how professional problem-solving communities will evolve in the coming years.

Please take a moment to register and vote!

By the way, as I was reading some of the comments on the registration page, I ran across this one from someone named John: “Interesting…crowd-sourced panel picking for a session on open innovation and crowdsourcing. Pretty appropriate I must say.”

We couldn’t agree more John.

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!