Beyond the Bounty – The Risks and Rewards of the RTP Challenge
by InnoCentive Founder Alph Bingham, Ph.D
There has been a recent discussion on the LinkedIn Open Innovation group around use of incentives for public good. In that discussion, David Lincoln, founder of Novipella, raised some excellent and very thoughtful points about how Open innovation (OI) may evolve and what consequences might eventually arise. These are, in fact, so thoughtful, that I am not surprised to learn that he was trained in synthetic organic chemistry 
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David’s comments were specifically in regard to the Reduction to Practice (RTP) Challenge type, and the expense involved in operating a lab necessary to work on these Challenges — an expense which is not recovered unless the solution submitted by that lab or practitioner is successful and awarded. This is a potential disincentive for some researchers who may be able to provide a solution but are wary of undergoing the expensive endeavor of developing and validating their solution without the guarantee of payment.
It is a problem that was considered at the launch of InnoCentive — and in fact, the very first RTP Challenges were seen as an experiment in the business model itself. Could/would Solvers absorb the risk of investing in a reduction-to-practice?
In an interesting quirk of history, those first Challenges were issued just prior to the major anthrax scare of 2001. As a consequence of that timing, in the late fall of 2001, both U.S. government officials, and InnoCentive began receiving white powders in the mail from unfamiliar addresses. We, however, did NOT don hazmat suits. We cheered. The model worked! Since those early experiments we have striven to understand why it worked and how InnoCentive can facilitate success for both Seeker and Solver to an even greater degree. (more…)
