I am currently a second year MBA student at the Yale School of Management. I graduated from Indian Institute of Technology in 2006 with a major in Electrical Engineering. Thereafter, I worked with British Telecom as a consultant where I was primarily involved in strategy and planning. At BT, I held a cross functional profile that spanned around Crisis Management, Strategy, Technology, Finance and Project and Vendor Management. I am passionate about the telecom/technology sector and am extremely interested in the emerging markets. I will graduate from Yale School of Management in May, 2011.

At Yale, my interests lie in Strategy, Finance and Technology. I spent the last summer with Zephyr Management, a Private Equity fund in NYC. I also interned with IBM in Business Performance Services. I head the South Asian Business Forum at the School of Management and am also a member of the organizing team of Asia Tomorrow- Yale’s premier student run conference.

Sasha Vyash, my team mate, is a second year MBA student at Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. She has a master’s degree in Economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University (India). She is actively involved in the South Asian Business Association and consulting club at Tuck. She has extensive experience in the retail and analytics industry. Before Tuck, she worked for an Analytics firm called Dunnhumby. At Tuck, she majors in Marketing and Strategy. She spent the last summer with Fidelity and would be joining McKinsey & Co. in June, 2011. She has a huge interest in economic development and emerging markets.

Having spent a major part of lives in India, we have been constantly exploring areas and opportunities for development in the emerging markets. Emerging markets, due to the dynamic, ever changing landscape presents a challenge to the entire business community. There are principally two challenges involved here- to construct innovative business models that are sustaining and more importantly, touch the base of the pyramid. In our opinion, emerging markets are revolutionary because there is a huge room for innovation and entrepreneurship in these regions. As we challenged ourselves to come up with good solutions, we heard of the Economist Innocentive challenge. This was an excellent platform for us to showcase our idea and also gather feedback and response from the rest of the innocentive community. We have a good mix in our team. I have a background in engineering. So, I have a good grasp of things from an implementation perspective. Sasha has a background in Economics thereby proving the bigger macroscopic picture. In addition, both of us being MBAs have a fair knowledge of the other factors that are crucial for a sustainable business model. Winning the challenge has been absolutely thrilling for us and we definitely look forward to solve more challenges here!

Summary of the Proposal

Our idea revolves around leveraging the telecom revolution in emerging markets and using sophisticated analytics techniques to enhance the agriculture value chain. Our tool- Agro-Engine would help identify trends and deliver unique insight to farming communities, processing plants and retails giants that would help them in investment management and portfolio optimization. The scope of this tool is huge in emerging markets.

Background: The advent of 3G services (in developed and emerging markets) has laid the foundation of a seamless information exchange platform that would connect the rural markets. The challenge lies in bridging the huge digital divide and using this to further advance the rural population. Presently, a large number of farmers allocate their resources based on their legacy and word of mouth. Processing plants and retail majors have no ways to identify or predict future supply and thus cannot optimize their investments.

We propose the conceptualization of a data driven, Portfolio Management Tool that would help the industry identify trends based on historic data and performance. The tool is apt for developed economies where there is already sufficient telecom penetration. Agro-Engine would aid farming communities and large corporate giants in the retail and agriculture sector in allocating their resources and optimizing their portfolio. For example, a typical farmer’s portfolio would consist of crops he intends to grow on his land. Our analytics tool would incorporate multiple inputs such as previous track record, financial constraints, risk appetite and time to market. The tool would leverage the 3G revolution in developing economies through rural penetration and existing rural infrastructure. With increased usage and data availability, the tool would become more and more robust and gain credibility in identifying trends and delivering useful recommendations.

As 2010 draws to a close we would like to thank you all for your support of InnoCentive. We achieved great things with your help, and anticipate the same momentum in the upcoming year. But, before looking forward to 2011, let’s take a few moments to consider the past year, and recap major InnoCentive milestones in 2010. After all, a good retrospective can put you in the right frame of mind to tackle the future.

The past year has been exciting and groundbreaking in many ways: we launched the Emergency Response 2.0 pavilion in response to the BP Oil Spill and other natural disasters; we helped propel collaboration and Challenge-Driven Innovation in the U.S. Government by working with NASA, In-Q-Tel and other government agencies; Solvers from around the world (people just like you) had an unprecedented opportunity to contribute to the NASA program and impact how the U.S. explores the “final frontier;” and we helped Toyota elicit ideas to improve the world using some of their most innovative technologies through their  Ideas for Good initiative. Then there were the Public Good Challenges, Partnerships with Nature and The Economist, and major improvements to our products and website.

Our mission has always been to help address and resolve problems that matter, so we have been fortunate to have the opportunity to work with organizations who ask the world to address global concerns and make extraordinary things happen. This year our Public Good Challenges addressed issues ranging from the environment, healthcare, and education, to science and philanthropy. InnoCentive Solvers have provided innovative solutions to the clean water and hydropower challenges faced by third world communities; they have addressed a critical malnutrition issue in pregnant women; suggested creative ways to involve parents in their children’s education; pioneered ways to attack Type 1 Diabetes; and identified extraordinary, unorthodox opportunities for philanthropic investment. These problems could not have been addressed if Seekers had not recognized that there were alternative and effective ways to find solutions, and if Solvers had not spent their time, effort and talent to help make the world a better place. Thank you all.

In concert with our partners, we seek to stimulate ideas and solutions from artists, entrepreneurs, scientists and engineers around the world. Our collaboration with Nature is bringing Challenges to a vast network of scientists; the Open Innovation Pavilion (shared with, and accessible through Nature.com) gives scientists the opportunity to tackle complex Challenges that face corporate, government and non-profit organizations. Working with The Economist and their ongoing Ideas Economy event series, we have reached out to solve Challenges as diverse as addressing education in remote areas of the world, reversing global climate change, and encouraging new innovative business models. Through these partnerships, Challenges are broadcast to an ever more diverse network of Solvers, resulting in new, eye-popping approaches to problems that matter. We are proud that the winner of the first Economist Challenge (the “Cyber Schools” Challenge) has already been approached by parties interested in funding his ideas!

Meanwhile, our products and website have seen significant improvements in the past year. InnoCentive@Work 3 is an enterprise platform for collaborative, Challenge-Driven Innovation that enhances your organization’s ability to tap into the diverse knowledge both inside and outside the organizational boundaries, create online communities and facilitate collaboration to solve your important business Challenges. We introduced Team Project Rooms and the Prodigy on InnoCentive.com – new capabilities designed to improve Solver collaboration, increase the quality of solutions and accelerate both Seeker and Solver success.

And finally, over the summer we launched a new version of the InnoCentive website! The site includes features for both Solvers and Seekers, whether new to InnoCentive or a long-time user. For new visitors, there is expanded information about Open Innovation and how to work with InnoCentive to solve meaningful problems. For veterans, there is improved navigation and search tools to get you to relevant Challenges more quickly. And there are new capabilities, such as an interactive Challenge Browser, Open Challenges listings and customizable Challenge Digest. We’ve made a significant investment in the site and in new features in 2010, largely based on the valuable input that we’ve received formally and informally from Seekers, Solvers and partners alike. Thanks for your support during this process – we couldn’t have done it without you.

Happy New Year, and we look forward to continuing to work with you in 2011, a year which may turn out to be even more innovative, productive and provocative than 2010.

— InnoCentive Team

Science is a noble pursuit, and I would pay to be a scientist if I had to. You can imagine how lucky I feel then, that the payment works the other way around.

Designing porous materials for carbon dioxide capture and hydrogen storage is my Ph.D. research at Northwestern University in the department of Chemical & Biological Engineering. My advisor, Professor Randall Q. Snurr, has helped me tremendously to become a specialist in molecular simulations and a super-computer systems administrator. These skills, simulations, programming and systems architecture, have been invaluable when approaching InnoCentive Challenges. As the speed of computers increases, there are fewer and fewer materials science and chemistry problems that cannot be better understood by a properly designed computer simulation.

While my current research is in Chicago, I was born in Canada, and I have a bachelor’s degree in engineering science from the University of Toronto. Biology and bioengineering are my hobby sciences, which I pursue (or just read about) in my spare time. Greater exposure to these fields is one of the benefits that draws me to InnoCentive.

I have been participating regularly in humanitarian and bio-related InnoCentive challenges since August, 2009. It is enlightening to read about contemporary problems in the variety of industries to which InnoCentive caters (which as far as I can tell, is every conceivable industry short of the military), and it is also fun to attempt to solve them! I have found that, while it is difficult to come up with a great idea, it is usually easy to make a half-decent suggestion… and sometimes that’s enough!

I would like to see InnoCentive provide additional services to help Solvers and ultimately lead to better solutions for the Seekers (e.g., providing mock solutions to the Solver community that preserved the average number of typographical errors of actual winning solutions). I’m glad that InnoCentive is so successful already, and I’m sure that as it evolves it will become much more successful in the future!

If you are a would-be Solver but are unsure of how to go about it, please feel free to send me an e-mail. I have a wide variety of interests, and am always excited to collaborate on a project!

Best regards and good luck

-Chris

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 became 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.

With the end of the Gulf Oil Spill Challenge in sight, we wanted to showcase an innovative solution that was submitted by a student from an Advanced Placement (AP) Environmental Sciences class from high school in New Jersey.

What I love about this piece is that it came from the leaders of tomorrow (students), it’s simple, and it focuses on the future (the clean up) even while many people and politicians remain focused on the past (blame) or the present (capping the wellhead). Here is the submission:

“Recently in our AP Environmental class, my teacher came in and told us about the oil spill.

He then told us about your website and began having us work on the clean up crisis of the oil.

All of the students partnered up and started to try out their ideas, if they had any.

I then came up with the idea to use baking soda, which led to some good results, and which ultimately led to an expansion of the idea:

We discovered that baking soda would create tar balls for a long enough period of time that you could place something underneath them, collect them, and drag them out of the water in tact.

So then my friend and I tried placing nylon stocking on the oil to see if it would allow the oil to pass through, and it worked.

Nylon stockings allow the oil to seep through, but they block the clean water.

The result of our tests culminated in our final idea, which actually cleaned up the water to near perfect quality:

• Place the stocking on top of the oil (the oil passes through this porous barrier)
• Sprinkle baking soda on the stocking and the oil
• Wait up to one minute
• Pull the stockings out of the water, which collects the tar balls and leaves the water nearly completely clean

We tested this in class on a large scale and we were able to accomplish getting the water clean.

I hope this idea helps in the crisis and we wish you the best of luck!”