Greetings – I am Abshar Rashid, a professional computer software engineer, with a Bachelors degree from NED University, Pakistan.

Though I have only 2 years of practical experience in the field (I recently graduated in 2008), I have been fortunate enough to work on some very innovative and creative projects during my past jobs. Apart from software development, I have a keen interest in Management Sciences and thus am currently pursuing an MBA degree along with a daytime job.

I become very interested in software development at a very young age: I designed my first software program (A Quiz Application) when I was around 9. It began when my mother bought me a mid-school level toy computer that had a built in Q-Basic compiler. This toy was probably too old for me, but it attracted my curiosity. I remember I had learnt the Q-Basic language all by myself using the Toy Computer’s manual. In fact, I was more interested in this “programming stuff” than all the other games/fun-activities this toy had to offer. I still have this toy with me today; alas it no longer works despite several attempts to fix it.

I joined InnoCentive only a few weeks before the submission date of my awarded Challenge. At first, I checked many Challenges that I found interesting and thought I could work on; but in the end I was only able to work on one because of some personal-life time constraints. My reason for working on this Challenge was its relevance to both of my favorite fields – Software Engineering and Management Sciences. I also anticipated getting a good learning and research experience, whether my solution was awarded or not. I believe, one way or another, knowledge always pays off. One might not succeed in a certain research challenge or a project at work, but the experience always transforms you into someone more skilled and knowledgeable. Initially, I was awed by the many scholarly profiles (PhDs or Masters) in the past winner’s list; I asked myself whether I should even attempt a solution, having such a comparatively humble experience and education. But then I just re-iterated to myself that this was a learning experience and winning was not everything. I guess it was this sincere commitment that made me come up with a solution that I was finally quite confident about, as I submitted it.

The research model that InnoCentive is using is highly commendable. It is advantageous to both the Seekers and Solvers – such that Seekers gain the advantage of ‘outsourcing’ their R&D issues to a collective talent from all around the world, while Solvers like me get a chance to work on highly practical and intricate R&D industrial issues. Also, I’d specially like to thank all the InnoCentive staff for being extremely supportive throughout. Not only was the evaluation process perfectly authentic; the awarding process was very straightforward and simple.

To me, innovation means to seek within. I never begin my research by searching or browsing through the internet for ideas and solutions. I do not remember having searched online for a single instance while working on this awarded Challenge. I always primarily try to come up with my own designs and my own methods, sometimes brainstorming for several straight hours. I would only search the net if my own brainstorming failed to yield the required results. InnoCentive provides the world with opportunities to polish and practice our creativity and knowledge. I’d recommend everyone to actively pursue the Challenges beyond their interests using InnoCentive as a Platform.

Today we’re featuring a solution we received from InnoCentive Solver, Joseph Pegna, which focused on freezing MC252 while it was still blasting oil into the cold waters at the bottom of the Gulf.

The purpose of Pegna’s solution was not to contain the leak from the ocean floor indefinitely, but rather to contain it efficiently until such time as a more permanent plug could be found.

The solution takes advantage of the relatively stable and low temperature of the sea floor to provide a temporary obstruction to the leak by freezing locally available materials: oil and water.

A back-of-the-envelope estimate of leak flow-rates indicates that a few ten’s of cubic meters of liquid Nitrogen would be sufficient to stop the oil in its track. Subsequent freezing of the surrounding water, either by additional liquid N2 or by lowering an industrial refrigeration unit to the ocean floor, would keep an ice plug over the leak.

Summary

This proposal takes advantage of the following conditions that exist at the depth of the leak:

1. Local temperature is about four degrees Celsius.
2. High salinity and pressure means that the surrounding water will freeze at around -25C below the surface freezing point.
3. At -25C, oil becomes so viscous that it will behave like tarmac.

The prevailing conditions of the water at the ocean bottom, along with the flow rate of the oil spill indicates  that the amount of “cooling” necessary to bring water to its freezing point in the well’s vicinity is relatively modest. While I have not performed an extensive analysis of the heat exchange, it appears that between 10 and 100 cubic meters of liquid nitrogen would be sufficient  to block the flow of oil long enough to maintain a local frozen cap with an industrial refrigeration unit. The refrigeration unit can be powered from the surface but will be operating on the sea floor. This refrigeration can be used to contain the leak for a long enough time that alternative, permanent plugs can be inserted, or an alternative relief well can be drilled.

An initial injection of liquid N2 is envisioned by inserting a delivery nozzle as far down into the well as possible. This initial burst of liquid N2 can turn the surrounding oil into an increasingly hardened material, resembling a tar-like foam,  that will hold off the flow. As this foam comes into contact with water, it is expected that it will create a surrounding shell of ice.

The addition of an industrial refrigeration unit  would then be sufficient to maintain the temperature locally low enough to preserve the temporary blockage.

The main risk of this proposal resides in the fact that the composite ice and solidified oil foam will have a density much lower than the surrounding liquid water. Hence, to prevent the foam’s buoyancy force from tearing off the ice cap, sand or any other high density material would have to be added as the ice forms to increase the composite density.

Alternatively, this ice cap could be easily captured at the surface to prevent oil from spreading after the cap is released.

Hi Dave.  Thanks for talking to our Solvers today.

Absolutely – thanks for asking.

Your partnership – USAID, Nike, NASA and the State Department is interesting – can you tell us how this collaboration came about?

If you think about it, there’s a pretty significant benefit to NASA, USAID and the State Department working together to share skills, information and expertise.  NASA, for example, has spent years, decades really, perfecting the art of working in resource constrained environments, through the evolution of manned space flight.  This expertise can be used in all kinds of other situations, to solve to problems in developing countries, or in dealing with natural disasters, just to name a few.    Another example is the extremely sophisticated earth sensing and data analysis capabilities that NASA has developed, which can be used to deal with environmental impacts from natural disasters.   USAID and the State Department have similar expertise to share – and we realized that we are more likely to succeed when we work together.

To round out the partnership, it made sense to bring in an organization from the private sector.  For this Challenge in particular, with its focus on improving health and promoting healthy habits, Nike was a natural fit, because of their focus on viable business models and sustainability.  Nike has always been an environmentally responsible corporation, with a long history of releasing innovative products, therefore they were excited for the opportunity to be part of the collaboration.

What are your objectives in participating in this Challenge?

All the participants in LAUNCH, from the partners, to the Council members and the Innovators, believe that innovation is at the heart of improving human health for everyone.  In particular, in developing countries, as in space, where resources are limited, new models and tools for supporting good health are required.  This program is like early stage investing – if a few of the innovations we work with in LAUNCH: Health actually develop to provide game-changing  impacts, we will be pleased.  The upside potential is huge and we fervently hope that LAUNCH can play a small part in making some of the innovations that are selected develop faster and provide impact on a larger scale.

Your Challenge is fairly broad – where do you expect solutions to come from?

We set the Challenge up that way intentionally, as we really want to hear from an equally broad range of innovators.  We hope that this will include start up businesses, individual innovators that may or may not be affiliated with a university or other research facility, and Non-governmental organizations.  We expect to see submissions from around the world – in fact it would be exciting to see solutions from indigenous innovators from developing markets .

There’s no award amount listed for your Challenge – what will the Solvers with the best solutions receive?

We know that our Challenge is a bit non-traditional, but we think winning Solvers will get more value from this award than they could even begin to imagine.  The award, or “LAUNCH” cycle consists of 3 phases:

• The identification phase- during this phase, the solutions are reviewed by our panel of experts.  The top 10 are selected to present at the LAUNCH event.
• The event –  the top 10 Solvers will be invited to the Kennedy Space Center in October, for a 3 day meeting that will coincide with the next Space Shuttle launch. This is where they present their solutions in person.   During this phase they receive unparalleled access and feedback from our council of 40 thought leaders, successful policy makers and business leaders.
• The Accelerator – this is the real payoff.  Our LAUNCH team will work with the winning Solvers to improve business plans for their innovations, help with promotion, and, in some cases, identify sources of funding.  The end goal is to bring each of 10 solutions to fruition.

Many of the innovators that participated in LAUNCH: Water in March 2010 provided feedback that the benefit of participating in LAUNCH as an innovator was “priceless”

Can you tell us who will be reviewing the submissions?

The partners will make the final decision on which innovators will be selected to participate.  Members of the LAUNCH council and experts from the field of healthcare will provide input and help narrow the field through the selection process.

Earlier this year, you selected 10 finalists, who presented their ideas at the LAUNCH:  Water Forum.  Can you tell about the experience of the innovators that participated both at the event and after?

Sure – here are two really interesting examples:

Mark Sobsey from  the University of North Carolina contributed a bacterial water test that has been selected by USAID to be used in a field survey on heath issues.  For the first time, this annual survey will be able to include an evaluation of water quality.  Mark said,

“The LAUNCH Forum delivered increased visibility and unique insights for my innovation from all the experts, and most importantly within mission critical communities.  The LAUNCH Accelerator delivered high-level expertise and capacity in the areas of product design, market, and user research — all key steps in taking my innovation forward as a commercial product.”

Mark Tomkin from DTI-r in the United Kingdom, submitted a technology that NASA has made plans to evaluate for possible use on the International Space Station. Mark Tomkin said,

“LAUNCH gave DTI-r an excellent opportunity to ’stress test’ not just the technology, but also our business models, in front of experts; then interact with them in small groups. LAUNCH proved to be a superb sounding board for DTI-r’s technology and business.
Through the LAUNCH Accelerator, doors were opened for DTI-r which helped to accelerate the company toward full commercial roll out of our technology, as well as provide back-room expertise to support the company as we transition from R&D to full commercialization. “

What role do you think Open Innovation can play in solving problems like these?

The partners are all very excited about using open innovation concepts to broaden the field of innovators (or Solvers) that are focused on sustainability issues and human development.  We all believe that open innovation is a more effective approach to meet our goals, whether in space, on Earth, as a business or as government agency.  Here at USAID, we are working on other open innovation programs to help us, and the broader community of interested parties, actually solve some of our most vexing development challenges.

Thanks for your time, and good luck with your Challenge!

Thank you.

Introduced in 2008, InnoCentive@Work is the fast, easy and cost-effective way to harness the collective intellectual power of your best and brightest people. It provides an open forum where everyone in your organization is encouraged to collaborate on your most pressing organizational challenges via a secure, easy-to-use web-based portal. It rewards individuals from anywhere in your company for their contributions toward solving your most pressing problems. And it gives you the ability to unleash breakthrough innovations designed to drive growth and profitability – in less time and for less money than you ever thought possible.

Since InnoCentive@Work employs a Software-as-a-Service model, we can get your organization trained and your open collaborative environment up and running in as little as 90 days.

Step One – InnoCentive’s technology team works with you to integrate and configure InnoCentive@Work to operate through your intranet. At the same time, our Client Services team helps define the scope of your program, train your organization, and establish internal policies for integrating open innovation into your existing processes.

Step Two – InnoCentive helps you create and prioritize a pipeline of pressing problems and establish a process for approving Challenges, reviewing submissions, and using rewards to motivate participation. We even help Challenge owners or Seekers write the Challenge text to be posted on the InnoCentive@Work website.

Step Three – We educate internal Innovation Champions to help exploit the full power of the InnoCentive@Work process. These Champions ensure that the Challenges your team is collaborating on are aligned with your organization’s strategic priorities.

Step Four – InnoCentive supports you on an ongoing basis to continually balance your need for innovating internally with the potential of tapping into external resources to increase the diversity of

your Solver base through InnoCentive.com.

Think inside out.

Once you have established an open environment and shifted your organization’s cultural perspective on sharing ideas and innovations, it’s easy to extend your innovation initiatives and move your Challenges outside the walls – from InnoCentive@Work to The InnoCentive Challenge Center on InnoCentive.com.

We’ll work with your Seekers to anonymize and redefine their internal Challenges for public disclosure – where they can be solved by any of the 200,000+ members of InnoCentive’s global Solver network. So you will have some of world’s best and brightest minds working to help you design a better product, create a life-saving medical breakthrough, or make life better for millions.

Earlier this summer, we released InnoCentive@Work 3 which allows customers to engage and collaborate even more broadly by connecting with their external communities of customers, consultants and partners, thereby creating newer communities of potential Solvers and increasing the likelihood of finding breakthrough solutions that yield measurable business results.  InnoCentive@Work 3 is built for flexibility: it adapts to the community’s optimal style of working and collaborating, allowing Solver teams to define the voting and rating rules of their group.   Read more about InnoCentive@Work 3 in this interview with InnoCentive CTO David Ritter.

Don’t just take our word for it.  In a commissioned study announced earlier this year, Forrester Consulting found that a large, multinational agricultural company achieved a return on investment (ROI) of 182%, with a payback period of less than two months, by deploying InnoCentive@Work along with InnoCentive Challenges and OnRAMP to facilitate innovation in their R&D organization.  See the study here.

Clouds, big data, and smart assets: Ten tech-enabled business trends to watch, McKinsey Quarterly

Excerpt:

Trend 1: Distributed cocreation moves into the mainstream
Trend 2: Making the network the organization
Trend 3: Collaboration at scale
Trend 4: The growing ‘Internet of Things’
Trend 5: Experimentation and big data
Trend 6: Wiring for a sustainable world
Trend 7: Imagining anything as a service
Trend 8: The age of the multisided business model
Trend 9: Innovating from the bottom of the pyramid
Trend 10: Producing public good on the grid

Source : Clouds, big data, and smart assets: Ten tech-enabled business trends to watch, Jacques Bughin, Michael Chui, and James Manyika, McKinsey Quaterly, 2010/08

Citizen science: People power, Nature

Excerpt: And it works. This week, Baker and his colleagues publish evidence that top-ranked Foldit players can fold proteins better than a computer. By collaborating, these top players often come up with entirely new folding strategies. “There’s this incredible amount of human computing power out there that we’re starting to capitalize on,” says Baker, who is feeding some of the best human tactics back into his Rosetta algorithms.

Source: Citizen science: People power, Eric Hand, DOI: 10.1038/466685a, Nature 466, 685-687, 2010/08/04

The makings of great leaders, Nature

Selected: Why Some People Lead, Why Others Follow, and Why It Matters

Excerpt: Our obsession with the personalities of great leaders is out of kilter with the scientific basis of social hierarchies, according to two books. In The New Psychology of Leadership, psychologists Alexander Haslam, Stephen Reicher and Michael Platow propose that successful stewardship owes more to the good relationship between a leader and his or her followers than to an individual’s character. In Selected, psychologist Mark van Vugt and journalist Anjana Ahuja take an evolutionary approach, suggesting that leadership emerged to aid the survival of small communities on the African plains.

Source: The makings of great leaders, Michael Bond, DOI: 10.1038/466819a, Nature 466, 819 “820, 2010/08/11

Getting Better To Get Bigger, Science

Excerpt: The end of the age of fossil fuels may be in sight, but what comes after is still a bit of a blur. There are numerous alternatives to coal, oil, and natural gas from electricity generated by solar farms to biofuels brewed from plants. Scaling up these alternative sources of energy, however, has proved a challenge. This special issue explores the progress that researchers are making in developing better alternatives, and the technical, political, and economic pitfalls associated with scaling them up.

Source: Getting Better To Get Bigger, David Malakoff, Jake Yeston, Jesse Smith, DOI: 10.1126/science.329.5993.779, Science Vol. 329. no. 5993, p. 779, 2010/08/12

Ecology: Close relatives are bad news, Nature

Excerpt: Simple models of competition among species suggest that a few tree species, those that are best at exploiting limiting resources such as light and nutrients, should dominate ecosystems such as tropical rainforests. However, rainforests support hundreds of apparently very similar tree species  ” typically a small number of abundant species and many rare ones. How do these species coexist? Why are some of them rare and others common? Complementary studies in Panama by Comita et al. and Mangan et al. show that a form of negative feedback driven by soil organisms can explain the relative abundance of tropical tree species, as well as promoting their coexistence.

Source: Ecology: Close relatives are bad news, Seth Cooper, Firas Khatib, Adrien Treuille, Janos Barbero, Jeehyung Lee, Michael Beenen, Andrew Leaver-Fay, David Baker, Zoran Popović & Foldit players, DOI: 10.1038/466698a, Nature 466, 698 “699, 2010/08/05

Cancer biology: Blood vessel regulator, Nature

Excerpt: Growing tumours rely on a good blood supply to feed them, so the identification of a small RNA molecule that switches on blood-vessel growth in tumours provides a potential target for anti-cancer drugs.

Source: Cancer biology: Blood vessel regulator, DOI: 10.1038/466669b, Nature 466, 669, 2010/08/05

Which Parental Gene Gets the Upper Hand?, Science

Excerpt: Things used to be relatively straightforward when it came to parental influences on gene action. Mom and Dad passed on one copy (or allele) of each autosomal gene to their progeny and overall, the expression and function of genes inherited by the offspring were indifferent to which parent they came from. When imprinted genes were discovered, this simple picture changed. That is because chemical modifications of DNA that occur early during development of the female and male germ line (the cells that form the egg and sperm) epigenetically mark imprinted genes for differential expression, depending on whether the gene is of maternal or paternal origin. In some cases, such imprinting suppresses expression from the maternal allele, leading to sole (or predominate) expression of the paternal copy of the gene. For other imprinted genes, the opposite is true and expression is solely or predominately from the maternal allele.

Source: Which Parental Gene Gets the Upper Hand?, Lawrence S. Wilkinson, DOI: 10.1126/science.1194692, Science Vol. 329. no. 5992, pp. 636 – 637, 2010/08/06

Rewarding altruism, SFI Working Papers

Abstract: In this work we examine studies from different disciplines which lead us to hypothesize that human altruism can be intrinsically rewarding and, given its plasticity, is modulated by social contexts. We address several investigations on neural and endocrine processes, as well as the beneficial effects that altruistic behaviour and social support have on immunity, life expectancy and stress levels, among other advantages. Considering this evidence, we propose a model of social cooperation that presents phase transition in an imperfect supercritical pitchfork bifurcation. The manuscript proposes a potential beneficial role of altruism that could account for its occurrence among non-kin and beyond reciprocity. The model presented here allows the experimental testing of this hypothesis under different cultural and social conditions. This contribution sheds new light on the theoretical discussion about the origin and development of altruism in humans.

Source: Rewarding altruism, Mariana Lozada, Paola D’Adamo, Miguel Angel Fuentes, DOI: SFI-WP 10-07-014, SFI Working Papers

Tracing Evolution’s Recent Fingerprints, Science

Summary: The once-stalled hunt for the genes that helped humans adapt to new climates, diseases, and diets is exposing how evolution works.

Source: Tracing Evolution’s Recent Fingerprints, Ann Gibbons, DOI: 10.1126/science.329.5993.740, Science Vol. 329. no. 5993, pp. 740 – 742, 2010/08/12