Perspectives on Innovation

by Alph Bingham, Founder and Board Member, InnoCentive

Recently Dwayne Spradlin and I published a blog titled “Why Challenges will transform the future of innovation, work and business” in which we laid the groundwork for the topic “What is A Challenge?”  In this blog, we described the Challenge as:

We committed to exploring each of these facets in more depth.  In today’s post, we’re going to begin the discussion of the Challenge as the fundamental unit of problem solving.

The Challenge as fundamental unit of problem solving – Part 1

As we worked to create a successful business around this new model, new language sprang up to characterize it.  We have mentioned the coining of the terms “crowdsourcing” by Jeff Howe and “broadcast search” by Karim Lakhani.   Internally InnoCentive used familiar terms in very deliberate ways.  Our customers, providing challenging problems to our network, became “Seekers.”  And our network was one of “Solvers.”  The problems themselves evolved to “Challenges.”  And we used these descriptions as we analyzed questions like:  What was the value proposition to Seekers?  Why did Solvers engage? And how did the properties of the Challenge serve to effectively contribute to its solution?

As we deepened our knowledge of the Challenge and its role and the means of maximizing its service, we recognized that the Challenge shares DNA with the modularity processes, earlier described by Carliss Baldwin and Kim Clark of Harvard Business School. A portion of the global innovation objective is formulated as a Challenge, in which a “Challenge” essentially represents the problem statement for a block of work that can be modularized and in most cases rendered “portable.” That is, such a block of work can be outsourced or insourced as an integral unit. (more…)

The following post was written by Tim O’Brien, InnoCentive’s Marketing Manager.

A successful solution contains more than great ideas — the presentation of those ideas is equally vital. Solvers frequently ask us “how should I format my solution?” This is a difficult question, as every Challenge is different and there is no one-size-fits-all solution template (we’ve awarded submissions that range from two paragraphs to over 100 pages). Instead of providing an overly restrictive template or form for submissions, we suggest keeping in mind a few simple guidelines. Below are three past blog posts from our client services teams that highlight some common themes and best practices for developing and presenting a winning solution.

Blog post: 10 Tips for Writing a Winning Solution

Not sure where to begin? Start with these 10 tips based on previous winning solutions. Remember if you have a Challenge-specific question, you can communicate with the Seeker using the “Messages” tab in the Challenge Project Room. (more…)

Elly Madrigal, Seeker Program Manager, compares InnoCentive@Work Challenges with InnoCentive.com Challenges.

InnoCentive has two complementary platforms built upon our Challenge-based Problem Solving Methodology – the original, online InnoCentive.com, and the SaaS platform, InnoCentive@Work, which brings Challenge driven innovation into the boundaries defined by your organization.

Choosing to post a Challenge on one platform as opposed to another is predicated upon certain factors. One goal of a Challenge posted internally on InnoCentive@Work is to not only develop a Solution that meets a strategic initiative of the organization, but to also create collaboration amongst a global network of employees. Because of this, the Challenge scope, duration, and confidentiality can vary significantly, and guidelines to create well-bounded @Work Challenges are often set in conjunction with the organization’s coaching team. These guidelines, though specific to each organization, do have fundamental similarities, such as:

Limited Scope: A Challenge should not require any individual Solver to invest more than 10 hours of scheduled work-time to make a valuable contribution.

Actionable: If successful, your Challenge deliverables should include actionable results that the Challenge owner and his/her colleagues can deploy or utilize in a way that creates value for the organization.

Specific: The question posted in a Challenge should be specific and focused enough that any single individual might have the necessary skills to make a valuable contribution. Challenges that require knowledge of multiple disciplines should be narrowed down and made more specific.

Supported: Challenges should focus on business areas that are supported by management and are actively funded areas of work.

Owned: The person who suggests a Challenge is typically the one who will be responsible for writing and posting it on InnoCentive@Work. Therefore, Challenges should have a clear owner who will also be able to take responsibility for owning and implementing the results. You should not be suggesting Challenges that neither you nor your close colleagues would own.

These guidelines conveniently spell out the word L.A.S.S.O. We recognize that not all Challenges will meet all of these guidelines, but we do strongly recommend that you develop your Challenges with this acronym in mind to yield the best results possible – bringing both collaboration and open innovation to your organization and solving those problems that matter today.

In the effort to build a culture of innovation, it is InnoCentive’s role to provide its Solver community with the opportunities they need to take full advantage of their potential. This means presenting you with as many challenges as we can, even if we don’t have a financial stake in them. That’s why earlier this year we started aggregating external challenges.

When you click on the External Challenges tab you will see a list of the almost one hundred challenges we’ve processed so far. These challenges have been pulled from all over the web, by organizations ranging from Starbucks to NASA, and are updated regularly. If an opportunity presents itself, you can find out about it here.

The types of challenges range from colossal projects like the NASA Centennial Challenges, to student technical paper competitions and awareness projects geared towards children (which are a great way to get kids involved in open innovation!). These challenges welcome participants from almost any background.

Open innovation is about finding creative solutions to problems, and the world is teeming with problems. We’re going to make it as easy as we can to connect you with those problems. Good solutions need to be found for these challenges, and you’re the best community to do it.

With a static kill procedure solution in place on the MC252 well in the Gulf, pressure tests are being performed and results are being reviewed.

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.
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