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…)

Hello everyone.

I wanted to give you all an update related to our efforts to assist BP with the Oil Spill situation in the Gulf of Mexico.

As you may recall, the most recent update was a contact and expression of interest from BP that was orchestrated by a combination of outreach from the White House, Anthea Stratigos at Outsell, our partner Nature, and general media exposure.  After weeks of no response from BP, this was indeed a major breakthrough and we thank everyone that made that possible.

Specifically, BP officials contacted InnoCentive on June 5^th with a positive tone and apparent eagerness to work together.  Their initial positioning was quite surprising, stating that there was no real opportunity to assist with the oil leak itself, “ …that the next 3 main projects are already in engineering and build for delivery in mid and late June.  It is unlikely that there is space for delivery of further innovations in that arena before the relief well is completed in August.”  After two months of attempting to stop the leak, they made clear that outside solutions will not have a role in stopping or slowing the leak.

That said, they also indicated that two areas that they termed “real time problems” existed that would be vital to the clean up phase: remote sensing of oil and better skimming technology.  After discussions on the morning of Sunday, June 6^th, our teams started working immediately as a top priority with BP in order to define very specific challenges to drive solutions to these problems out to our network and the rest of the world.  At the same time, we began indicating in the press that BP was responding to the need to engage outside resources in their process.  Later that week, we expected approval to post these challenges on our website.  Approval did not come and BP failed to return calls for several days.  When our contacts did respond, they indicated that were sent home for much needed R&R, but were now back and ready to engage.  Not deterred, we checked in with them nearly every day over the subsequent week or so until June 19^th when they wrote us that they would not be proceeding.

Why wouldn’t they proceed?  Particularly when these ‘real time problems” were identified by their own teams as priorities?  They said that “… the agreements BP would have to enter into with Innocentive are too complex and burdensome to add to already overstretched workdays.”  These agreements are simple, allow us to use BP’s name without InnoCentive taking on liability, and set the price of engagement at $0.  Overstretched workdays?  Really?

My faith in BP was already stretched, now it is gone.  The teams at BP lack an urgency to involve the outside world.  They appear to actually believe they have this crisis well in hand while putting forth that stoic, concerned face we’re all now use to seeing – working around the clock and doing everything humanly possible .  BP is not the victim here.  A catastrophic leadership failure, driven by a closed and arrogant culture.  This does not bode well for the Gulf.

You, we and many others have attempted to help in this crisis situation.  It is clear BP cannot be trusted to make the right decisions here, further intervention will be necessary.  We are currently assessing the next steps on our end, but I wanted to make sure you all had the most recent updates.

Your assistance has been invaluable, but we are not yet done.  We may need to tap you for further ideas if we are all to make a difference here.  Thank you for your help to date and in advance.  We are not going quietly into the night on this one, not with what’s at stake in the Gulf.

Best regards,

Dwayne