Perspectives on Innovation

We recently announced the posting of the first InnoCentive for Startups Challenge, called “The Internet of Things“, by Precyse Technologies. We asked John Stopper, Co-Founder, CEO and President, to talk to us a bit about the Challenge and about being InnoCentive’s first InnoCentive for Startups Seeker.

Precyse Technologies is leveraging InnoCentive’s open innovation solution for startup companies. How will this benefit small companies? Would you recommend this?

Shifting from core product development to the high-growth stage in a startup’s evolution requires the company to scale rapidly while maintaining a lean and flexible structure. InnoCentive’s new offering targeted at startups allowed us to gain immediate access to a global talent base at a dramatically lower price point compared to the classical model of recruitment, training and execution. The InnoCentive approach also gave us greater control to sort through the different solver solutions, picking the best of breed approach with a very short time to market. The price advantage, time to market, control over the solution and the immediate access we gained to a global talent base makes InnoCentive a great choice for Precyse, both in the R&D and in the business development domains. I would recommend InnoCentive for startups to any company focusing on rapidly growing its market and product offering while maintaining an innovation advantage.

Your current Business Challenge is called “Enabling the Internet of Things“. Can you please explain the meaning behind the name, and explain a little bit about the Challenge.

Precyse offers its customers a wireless network solution, dedicated for asset and machine communications. This asset network allows inanimate objects, such as engines on an automotive manufacturer’s line, to wirelessly communicate their location, sensory status and even get remote instructions to take action. N3, the first bi-directional, wireless asset network standard from Precyse takes a lip forward in RFID evolution. Coupled with the Precyse Smart Agent, a ‘cell phone” build for assets, Precyse offers an out-of-the-box solution with the promise to build a world of networked and interconnected made-smart devices. Everything from engine parts, home appliances or cars may be in communications range, heralding the dawn of a new era; one in which today’s Internet (of data and people) gives way to tomorrow’s Internet of Things.

Following a successful technology cooperation with SAP, we decided to launch a first business challenge in the SAP pavilion on InnoCentive. The objective of this challenge is to identify exciting new opportunities, integrating the Precyse real time asset visibility product suite with legacy software solutions from leading supply-chain management vendors. We wish to incentive the community to help us indentify new partners and new end-customer opportunities, embracing this innovative approach for real-time supply chain visibility.

What appealed to you about posting your Challenge on InnoCentive?

We are always searching for new and innovative ways to enable fast growth and a smarter use of the company’s capital resources. Precyse found both with the Innocentive offering for startups. The impressive short term impact we experienced and the excellent support we have been receiving from the InnoCentive team contributed to making this a successful experience – one I would recommend to any fast-growth business to explore.

Paradigm recently posted a $100,000 Challenge seeking ways of storing and analyzing data in 3D fault networks.  This Challenge is unique in its award amount and in the amount of data that Paradigm has shared with Solvers.  We asked Duane Dopkin, senior vice president of technology at Paradigm, to talk to us a bit about the Challenge and what they are hoping to achieve with the solution.

Hi Duane – thanks for agreeing to talk to us today.  As background for our Solvers, can you tell us a bit about the current state of oil and gas exploration?

Hi – sure.  In order to sustain growth and fulfill hydrocarbon demand, oil and gas companies must aggressively replace depleted hydrocarbon reserves and offset production decline in mature fields. Replacement of hydrocarbon reserves has meant shifts in exploration to frontier areas (e.g. deep waters like the Gulf of Mexico, Arctic, etc.) or investigation of unconventional sources of hydrocarbons (e.g. heavy oil, tight gas, shale oil, coal bed methane).  Both of these shifts have required oil companies to become much more technically savvy.

Your Challenge is seeking a method of analyzing data related to faults in the earth’s crust. Can you tell us how this information will be used?

Subsurface faults and fractures can serve as flow conduits for hydrocarbons or conversely as permeability traps that compartmentalize reservoir hydrocarbons. Although many fractures and small scale faults cannot be detected in subsurface seismic images, larger faults and regional faults help geoscientists understand the deformation history of geologic basins which, in turn, can reveal information about hydrocarbon accumulation and hydrocarbon migration pathways. Faults and fractures can also compartmentalize areas of high pressure which can create drilling problems and safety hazards. Consequently, a full understanding of a fault network at basin and reservoir scales is a prerequisite for exploration in new areas as well as a prerequisite for well planning and drilling in development fields and mature fields. Obtaining a holistic understanding of fault networks depends not only on a geoscientists ability to locate, interpret, and model faults from subsurface signals and images (well logs, image logs, seismic data), but also to perform complex spatial and topological queries on the fault network data to better understand the history of subsurface deformation and its current deformed state.

What impact do you think the solution to this Challenge will have on the environment/more efficient use of natural resources?

Fractured reservoirs contain a large proportion of the world’s hydrocarbon reserves. Through a better understanding of a geologic basin and reservoirs fault network, geoscientists can not only drill less, but they can also drill safer. Indeed today, horizontal drilling techniques are employed in fractured reservoirs to optimize their drainage. By “geosteering” perpendicular to groups of natural fractures, engineers are able to drill fewer but more economic wells.

Paradigm posted a similar Challenge on the InnoCentive marketplace in 2008 – how does this Challenge differ from the earlier Challenge?

In 2008 we did post a Challenge similar to this one.  The Challenge involved defining an optimum fault network data structure. Based on the responses to the initial Challenge and the importance of the problem to both Paradigm and its oil and gas customers, we decided to refine the Challenge and raise the stakes.  We enriched and injected the initial Challenge with digital data examples, more real data images, and clarification on the current state of the art and suggestions for where Solvers should look for improvement. This Challenge upgrade was backed up with a substantially higher award (maximum of $100,000) to entice Solvers from many fields and to encourage them to participate in this scientific Challenge.

This is your third InnoCentive Challenge. What have you learned thus far about sourcing your Challenges on the InnoCentive Marketplace?

Paradigm has posted three Challenges to the InnoCentive Marketplace. With each posting we have experienced a gratifying spectrum of responses reflecting the diverse perspectives coming from outside the comfort zone of our own industry and scientific disciplines. Working with InnoCentive to impose more discipline and clarity in the formulation of our Challenges, has helped us help our Solvers to focus their responses.

Why do you think open innovation is a good fit for problems in the oil and gas industry?

The oil and gas industry searches for subsurface hydrocarbons using many scientific disciplines, mathematical methods, computer science advances, and engineering practices. Many of the seeds of advancement in this industry have originated outside of the oil and gas industry. In spite of the tremendous pool of talent inside the industry, we believe it is a healthy exercise to seek solutions to new problems from outside, as time-to-solution pressures are becoming more acute in this unpredictable oil and gas economy.

Thanks Duane – good luck with your Challenge.

Thank you.

We recently announced the renewal of our partnership with The Rockefeller Foundation.  The partnership, first established in 2006, has been overwhelmingly successful in using the InnoCentive “open innovation model” to help non-profit organizations develop solutions on behalf of the world’s most poor and vulnerable populations.  We asked Amanda Severeid from Rockefeller to talk with us a bit about the partnership and the use of prize-based open innovation in the non-profit world.

Hi Amanda – thanks for talking with us.  Why did you choose to extend your partnership with InnoCentive?
Due the success of the Rockefeller Foundation’s previous partnership with InnoCentive, resulting in 10 Challenges with an 80 percent success rate, the Foundation decided to extend the partnership to continue helping non-profit organizations gain access to cutting edge innovation and some of the world’s greatest scientific thinkers and problem solvers.

Why do you think open innovation is a good fit for non-profit organizations? (more…)

We recently posted a Challenge from a Fortune 500 Agricultural Sciences client, seeking an efficient chromosome doubling method in plants, in particular with respect to the identification of an optimal mitotic arrest agent and protocol.   Although this client has chosen to remain anonymous, they have offered to share some thoughts about the Challenge with us.  This is the first time we’ve posted a “Seeker Spotlight” without identifying the Seeker, and we’d like to know what you think – is it still valuable for you to hear from the Seeker if you don’t know who they are?  Tell us in the comments.  As always, Challenge specifics should only be discussed in the Challenge project room.

Hi Frank – thanks for agreeing to talk to our Solvers about your Challenge.  Can you tell us why you posted your Challenge on InnoCentive’s open innovation marketplace?

Sure.  In posting this web Challenge, we are seeking input, not only from plant biologists, but also from experts in seemingly unrelated disciplines.   For example, Solvers with expertise in either prokaryotic or eukaryotic realms of science perhaps such as 1) the regulation, stimulation, and synchronization of cell division,  2) microtubule assembly-disassembly dynamics, 3) regulation and control of chromosome movement, 4) regulation of cell fate, and 4) a medicinal fields such as cancer research (i.e,  reduction of uncontrolled cell division) may have skill sets that are directly applicable to the Challenge.

Could you provide a bit of background about this Challenge? 

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Earlier this week we announced that Prize4Life had awarded 2 InnoCentive Solvers for their efforts toward finding a biomarker for ALS.  Prize4Life also announced that they would be reposting the Challenge in May, in honor of the organization’s third anniversary.  I asked Melanie Leitner, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer from Prize4Life to talk to us about this Challenge, the submissions they received and their hopes for relaunching the Challenge.

Thanks for talking with us today, Melanie.  Can you tell us why you decided to post this Challenge on InnoCentive’s Marketplace?  How optimistic were you that you would find a solution?

When we first developed the Biomarker Prize in 2006, we wanted a way to draw in a broad, diverse, and international pool of competing teams.  As a brand new, very small organization just establishing itself, we did not have the capacity to conduct the kind of marketing and outreach campaign necessary to reach the audience we were looking to attract. We were looking for a partner with established expertise and existing international networks in the open innovation domain. InnoCentive was an attractive partner for us, particularly given their large pool of international solvers.  We also saw that InnoCentive shared many of Prize4Life goals and values, including wanting to change the world (but being agnostic as to where these new world-changing solutions might come from) and especially being international in focus. We knew that posting a $1 million prize, the largest prize ever posted on InnoCentive, would benefit the great work that both organizations were doing.

When our Scientific Advisory Board first set a 2-year deadline for this prize, we knew it was very ambitious.  After all, it often takes 2 years just to get an NIH grant, and in the same period of time, we were asking researchers to come up with a novel idea, find funding, conduct a patient-based study (with all the regulatory hurdles that entails), and provide us with validated results.  Still, we needed to balance these realities with the realities of ALS: most patients die within 2-5 years of diagnosis, and there is currently only one FDA-approved ALS drug on the market, so the need for an ALS biomarker of disease progression was urgent. We knew we were setting a very high bar, but we also knew that if we handled this prize well, we could accelerate research on a very targeted issue.  Our Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) believed that even though we were setting a very high bar, there was a reasonable likelihood that it could be met in 2 years and given the urgency of the need it was worth taking the risk.

Your Challenge was to find a biomarker for ALS – why did you decide to pay an award if the Challenge hasn’t been solved?

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