This was a Challenge completely out of the realm of my area of expertise as an Industrial Designer; however, I was so intrigued by the complexity and the global need of the project that I could not walk away from it. Putting my talents to use in a humanitarian cause is an incredibly humbling and rewarding experience and I was motivated by the fact that some of my ideas could possibly, in a small way, be put to use to help a world desperate for solutions.

The World Resources Institute (a global environmental think tank which works with governments, companies and civil society to build solutions to urgent environmental challenges) had initiated this Challenge to create a communication platform to connect vulnerable communities with climate change solutions. The requirements for solutions were not limited for use in just 1st world communities, but had to be broad enough to encompass ideas for 3rd world countries as well. A link was required between businesses, governments, and local communities, which would create an infrastructure game plan to attack climate change issues.

My solutions encompassed the use of inexpensive technologies such as cell phones and cell phone apps, and free social media to simplify and track the flow of information. I also created meaningful incentives for business and academia to offer solutions beyond just feel-good humanitarian charity, and introduced a more lucrative and enticing program where everyone would walk away having gained something real.

As a product designer I tend to think in pictures, and as this was a written proposal, I really struggled to get all of my ideas into a coherent format. I leveraged the strength of my day to day job of creating communication links between different disciplines, such as marketing and engineering, and applied that to the given Challenge. Approaching this problem as I would any other engineering or design project, I researched and gathered as much information as possible, identified the different groups of people involved, mapped a path to the most efficient/economical solutions; then I found technologies to link all the elements together. The final steps were to look beyond the obvious and to creatively expand solution directions, then figure out how I could reach desired results as inexpensively as possible, without losing value (”cost downs” in the product design field).

I have found that the more I branch out into areas outside of my career path, the more successful my solutions are in my own area of expertise. I truly appreciate the InnoCentive format of anonymous submission of proposals in which the Seeker looks at just the ideas and judges the work on its own merit–an innovative and fair idea that we often don’t see in the business world!

I would love to reach out to other Solvers in other disciplines to do a group project. If you have not entered a solution before, I urge you to do so. Even if you have just a tingle of an idea; pursue it, work it through, run it through a sieve and post it. I have lost more Challenges than I have won but I always come away intellectually expanded.

In our book “The Open Innovation Marketplace: Creating Value in the Challenge Driven Enterprise” published this year by FT Press, Alph Bingham and I explored Open Innovation and the Challenge Driven Enterprise. As we continue our discussion of Challenges and why they are profoundly important in this four part series, we turn our attention now to Challenges as a better way to organize and distribute work.

There are many kinds of work. There’s work on the assembly line, analyzing water for impurities, delivering newspapers, and fighting wars. And loosely speaking, Challenges may have a role to play in all these kinds of activities. And there is a different kind of more intellectual work requiring more creativity and invention, whereby a need is identified and a solution sought. Examples include development of a marketing strategy, a new plastic material for manufacturing, or an innovative approach to engaging customers.

In this latter kind of work, well-defined Challenges represent a powerful tool for organizing human activity and motivating innovative outcomes.

Organizations have spent years defining efficient organizational forms, writing Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), crafting job descriptions, and even developing robust platforms for planning and tracking work. And they are becoming more efficient. Use of contract labor and outsourcing of work, even whole functions, is more commonplace than ever. These approaches have often improved the bottom lines of businesses by increasing flexibility, lowering costs, and enabling projects to be accelerated. However with notable exceptions, these exercises in efficiency and shifting labor costs have done little to fundamentally change the rules of the game—to create anything like a “step change” in business performance and breakthrough innovation. In most instances, the 20th-century approach is essentially institutionalized resource planning and labor arbitrage that is simply commoditizing work and trading high cost labor for lower cost alternatives. It is not creating a unique competitive advantage. And it is certainly not tapping the creative capacity of organizations and the world to innovate. In some cases, it has actually achieved the opposite effect. Consider how many companies arguably lost their innovative edge by focusing so singularly on cost reduction that they lost the very resources and capabilities needed to be competitive over time (for example, Dell, General Motors). Some even created their next generation competition by turning their suppliers and partners into the only true sources of innovation (for example, semiconductors).

Clearly a less simplistic and more intriguing model for remaining both competitive and innovative must exist. If you are to fundamentally transform the economics of businesses, while achieving heightened levels of innovation performance, it is clear that a substantially more scalable approach will be required.

Such an approach would leverage network efficiencies, better economics, and modern technology. Organizations will open up their processes, inviting in thousands or millions of individuals and organizations to participate in their business processes.

Thanks to the Internet, you can now engage a global platform in your problem solving and use this platform to deliver against your goals with precision and consistency, while better leveraging your in-house resources.

But how can you engage this nearly unbounded marketplace of knowledge workers, creative and inventive minds, and productive capacity? You need a robust mechanism of engagement. It must be lightweight. It must be simple. It must be enormously flexible. It must be universally understood. Again, the “Challenge” fills that role, meeting all these requirements. In effect, the Challenge uniquely represents the enabling capability, the universal language, and the rules of engagement in neutral terms in order to empower a truly “open” access to human capital inside and outside the organization. It is magnificent in its simplicity. And in many respects, it has been hiding in plain sight for generations.

What is the inducement to this network of potential problem solvers to answer the call? For a simple idea, a small reward or inducement may be sufficient, whereas a technological innovation may require a team to spend months of time and capital to develop a winning solution, requiring substantial incentives. Internally focused Challenges may reward employees with reputation, points for the company store, or lunch with the CEO. Inducements may be peer recognition or once-in-a-lifetime experiences. (InnoCentive and NASA recently offered a unique viewing of a space shuttle launch.)

All these things must be assembled into a Challenge before it is exposed to the world of problem solvers. This also enables what some call the transition from Not Invented Here (NIH) to Proudly Found Elsewhere (PFE).

In the next and final post in this blog series, we will explore Challenges as a powerful Strategy tool.

Warm regards,

Dwayne Spradlin

In 2011, we added many thousands of people to our Global Solver Community.  We distributed more than $2m in Challenge awards.  And we welcomed Popular Science and EDF as strategic partners, resulting in a wealth of new Challenges for Solvers to tackle and an expanded pool of diverse minds for our Seekers to tap into.  We elevated Novel Molecule Compound (NMC) Challenges, providing higher award amounts and introducing fingerprinting technology, which resulted in greater uptake in Solver engagement and renewed confidence from our Seekers, ultimately leading to a doubling of NMC Challenges posted and solved as compared to 2010.

But we did something much more important. We accomplished the goal we set for ourselves when we embarked on this journey together – and I don’t say this lightly – we changed the world.  Together we brought solutions to light that would never have been uncovered any other way.  Below are a few of the Challenges that were awarded in 2011 that I’m particularly proud of.

Prize4Life – this was our “walk on the moon” Challenge.  The big, audacious goal that we weren’t sure was even achievable, but was so important that it carried a $1m award.  First launched in 2006, the Prize4Life Challenge sought a biomarker for ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease – a rare disease with such a rapid rate of advancement that there was literally no way to measure its progression.   In 2011, Solver Seward Rutkove was awarded the full $1m for his biomarker, which used a method called electrical impedance myography (EIM)  to measure the flow of a small electrical current through muscle tissue.  This biomarker has the potential to reduce the cost of Phase II clinical trials by more than 50%, and by correlating closely with disease progression, to remove one of the primary obstacles to industry investment in potential ALS therapies.

EDF Nitrate Capture System – PhD candidate Patrick Fuller submitted an innovative solution for the capture of toxic nitrates – and won the award on his first Challenge.  This solution could mitigate the 50-80% of fertilizer applied to commercial crops in the U.S. that is not absorbed by plants and is instead lost to water and air, causing dangerous environmental and health impacts in a growing number of watersheds around the country.

Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Games for Health – anyone who has cared for a chronically sick child knows the challenges that adolescence brings.  The increasing need for independence and social interaction makes following a prescribed health regimen difficult.  Cincinnati Children’s Hospital came up with a unique approach to inspire teenagers and pre-teens to take care of themselves – a video game.  The solution to this Challenge has the potential to dramatically improve health care outcomes for sick kids.  We’ll have more news on this solution in the coming weeks.

Humanitarian Air Drop – The Challenges posted by the Air Force Research Labs have truly captured the attention of our Solvers and of the media.  Of the seven posted so far, the humanitarian air drop Challenge hits closest to home for me.  The notion that distribution of aid to the most vulnerable communities, often in the middle of a war zone, could actually cause harm to people needing that aid, is difficult to accept.  Two Solvers, one from Indonesia and one from Peru, solved the Challenge, one of them referencing a well-known mechanism for moving coal from a mine shaft.  This is a perfect example of diversity and the uniquely prepared mind at work, as my colleague and InnoCentive Co-Founder Alph Bingham might say.

These Challenges represent just a few of the highlights of 2011.  The year 2012 is positioned to be even more impactful – we’ll be awarding new delivery options for the polio vaccine, better sanitation for billions of people in developing countries, and viable disposal options for environmentally toxic electronics.  Over the coming weeks and months we’ll be posting new Challenges that promise to be just as interesting, fulfilling, and earth shattering as those we saw in 2011.

Thank you for your continued participation in the InnoCentive Solver Community.

Warmest regards,
Dwayne

We recently announced a Challenge to advance research in childhood obesity with the Foundation for Prader-Willi Research.  The Challenge is very personal to the Foundation, which is composed of parents of children with Prader-Willi Syndrome.  A solution to this Challenge will have a direct and immediate impact on thousands of children who are currently suffering from the effects of the disorder.  We talked to Shawn about the Challenge, his personal experience with Prader-Willi Syndrome and the overall benefit the Challenge solution will have on the field of obesity research.

Hi Shawn.  Prader-Willi Syndrome (PWS) is a relatively rare disorder that may be unfamiliar to many of our Solvers.  Can you tell us a bit about it? What are the biggest challenges faced by children with PWS and their families?

Prader-Willi syndrome is a genetic disorder that occurs in approximately one out of every 20,000 births. PWS affects males and females with equal frequency and affects all races and ethnicities. PWS is recognized as the most common genetic cause of life-threatening childhood obesity.  The syndrome is genetically characterized as an abnormality of chromosome 15.

Common characteristics of PWS include small hands and feet, abnormal growth and body composition (small stature, very low lean body mass and early onset childhood obesity), hypotonia (weak muscles) at birth, insatiable hunger, extreme obesity, intellectual disability and mental illness.

The symptoms of Prader-Willi syndrome are thought to be caused by dysfunction of a portion of the brain called the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus is a small endocrine organ at the base of the brain that plays a crucial role in many bodily functions, including hunger and satiety, temperature and pain regulation, sleep-wake balance, fluid balance, emotions, and fertility

The biggest challenge for kids with PWS is the extreme desire to eat.  This insatiable hunger greatly reduces their quality of life and impacts areas such as learning and social interaction.  We’ve all had times in our lives where we missed a meal; maybe you missed a lunch because you needed to make a deadline at work.  As the hunger continues and that feeling of starvation increases, all you can think about is getting your next meal.  It’s difficult to think of anything but food.  Image having that feeling of hunger all day and for the rest of your life, no matter how much you eat.  That is what our kids face.

The stress level for a family with a child who has PWS is very high.  A big part of the stress is the constant supervision required to keep our kids safe from food.  Because they have an inability to regulate their food intake, this task falls on the parents and others that care for them.  Parents often have to lock up their cabinets and refrigerators to manage food consumption.  Unfortunately there have been many cases where a child has died because of overeating and every parent is aware of this risk.  In our society food is a big part of our culture and trying to balance this while protecting our children from food is very difficult and stressful.

How has PWS affected you personally?

It was Friday, a couple of days before Mother’s Day when we got the diagnosis that Ellie (our first child) had PWS.  It was the hardest piece of information I have ever received.  I was completely confused and scared about what this diagnosis meant.  The physical and emotional pain I felt at that moment was like nothing I had ever felt before.  It’s hard to explain unless you have gone through it but when I heard the words Prader-Willi syndrome I knew our lives would never be the same.  She would never be able to have children, going to college was very unlikely and she would not be able to live an independent life.  Those life expectations that we take for granted were gone.  You don’t really realize how important they are to you until they are gone.  Life had changed.

Ellie and our family have been through a lot.  She has required physical and speech therapy almost from birth to today.  Things that come easily for her peers and her baby sister are difficult for her.  She is almost 5 years old and as she gets older I sense that she realizes things are more difficult for her.  She has OCD and autistic like behaviors.  Though she is thin (because of her strict diet and daily physical activity) she is increasingly interested in food.  She talks about it a lot and it’s getting worse.  Food is becoming the most important thing in her life.  Before it was baby dolls, now it’s pizza or birthday cakes.  Almost as soon as she finishes her dinner she is asking her Mommy what’s for dinner tomorrow or when is her next meal.  As a parent, hearing the words “I’m hungry” from Ellie hurts every time I hear it.  And I hear it constantly throughout the day.  Ellie can’t help it but it doesn’t lessen the pain because I know it’s that insatiable appetite that will prevent her from living an independent life.

What would a solution to this Challenge mean for children with PWS?

A solution to this Challenge would increase our understanding of hyperphagia and provide a potential treatment for our loved ones with PWS.  As a parent with a child with special needs, all I want is for my daughter to reach her full potential and to not be limited by PWS.  Finding a treatment to help eliminate or reduce the desire to eat would greatly improve her life and others with PWS.

What prompted you to post your Challenge on the InnoCentive Challenge platform?

At the Foundation for Prader-Will Research we are constantly looking for ways to accelerate research.  Most of the Board members have a child with PWS so we are very motivated to develop or find treatments for our kids as soon as possible.  We believe that the InnoCentive Challenge platform is one way to help accelerate research.

Childhood obesity is a critical problem in general – how might a solution to this problem benefit the larger field of research into this issue?

There was an article I read that interviewed Dr. Francis Collins, Director of the NIH.  He was asked why we should focus on rare diseases when they affect so few people.  I will always remember his answer.  He said, “If you or your family were affected, it wouldn’t be rare for you. And the study of rare diseases has taught us more than most people realize. Furthermore, the opportunities to capitalize on what we have learned so far have never been greater. If you care at all about biology and about understanding medicine, rare diseases are critical.”

I strongly believe in this message. I think one of the reasons you can learn so much from studying rare diseases is that often these rare diseases have extreme characteristics or symptoms that also apply to the general population.  I’m an engineer by training and the easiest way to understand a problem is too look at the extreme version of that problem. It often allows you to more easily see the true cause of the problem.  A milder form of the problem increases the likelihood of missing or overloading the cause because the signals are not as strong.

People with PWS have the extreme characteristics that lead to obesity.  They have very slow metabolism and insatiable appetite.  Left unchecked, a person with PWS will become obese.  By looking more closely at PWS and determining the underlining mechanisms of hyperphagia, this understanding could be applied to the general population.

The Foundation for Prader-Willi Research has been very active in raising research funds for PWS.  Can you tell us about some of those efforts?

The Foundation for Prader-Willi Research was established in 2003 by a small group of parents who saw the need to foster research that would help their children with Prader-Willi syndrome lead more healthy and fulfilling lives.  Today, FPWR is composed of hundreds of parents, family members, researchers, and others who are interested in addressing the many issues related to PWS, including childhood obesity, developmental delays, psychiatric disorders and autism spectrum disorders.

The mission of FPWR is to eliminate the challenges of Prader-Willi syndrome through the advancement of research.  High quality research will lead to more effective treatments and an eventual cure for this disorder

To date, the FPWR has committed more than $2,000,000 to support PWS-related research.  Research funded by FPWR has been published in top medical journals, including Nature Neuroscience, Endocrinology, and BMC Genomics.

Is there anything you’d like our Solvers to know about your Challenge?

We are so excited to launch this Challenge with InnoCentive.  If this Challenge is solved it will directly impact the lives of people with PWS.  A greater understanding of hyperphagia in PWS is critical to developing or finding treatments that our loved ones so need and deserve.  It’s our hope that this Challenge will lead to treatments.  There is also a real possibility that any insight or treatments we learn from this Challenge can apply to the general obesity epidemic, which is one of our society’s biggest health crisis.

This year’s theme, “Unlikely Innovation”, is particularly interesting for us.  We know what you can do when given a difficult problem to solve.  Now we’re asking you to name the problem you’d like to see solved.  It can be serious or silly, world changing or relevant only to you.  Capture it on film and you could join the ranks of others who have won this Challenge – and have seen their videos published and promoted to their peers.

Need a little inspiration?  Here’s a list of interesting innovations proposed over the years, courtesy of Life magazine:

1. Rocket Mail – send mail from Berlin to New York in 24 minutes with this device.
2. Self-Saluting Hat – tired of taking the time to tip your hat when the occasion requires?  Here’s a hat that will do it for you.
3. Car Cooker – cook your meal while you drive with a stove that’s connected to your car’s exhaust pipe.
4. Mechanical Pea Eating Device – for when eating peas from a fork is too taxing.
5. Food Storage Suit – a suit of armor that could store enough food for a month.  Under water.
6. Shaving Robot – this one is just too terrifying to contemplate.  Never trust a robot that won’t look you in the eye.

The InnoCentive video Challenge closes on the 13th – don’t miss your chance to show us what innovation you’d like to see in 2012!