Perspectives on Innovation

On October 19th, InnoCentive CEO Dwayne Spradlin was a guest on the CNBC series “The Business of Innovation” with Maria Bartiromo.  The segment was called “The Power of the Crowd” and centered on harnessing the collective wisdom of the masses to find answers outside the corporate culture of R&D.  One of Dwayne’s key points was that the right answers are usually found in unexpected places.  His point was illustrated with the examples of two prominent InnoCentive Solvers, Giorgia Sgargetta, from Perugia Italy, who solved the Challenge of turning dishwater blue when more soap was needed, and John Davis, who solved the Oil Spill Recovery Institute Challenge.  Giorgia is a chemist who lives in Italy and even though her Challenge was in the Chemistry discipline, she would not have othewise been tapped as a resource by this Seeker.

John Davis was even farther from the Seeker’s network – he was not in the oil cleanup and recovery business, and in fact knew very little about it.  However, he solved a Challenge that had plagued the oil and gas industry for over 20 years by applying experience he had gained while working as a consultant for a concrete company.

In addition to the profiles of John and Giorgia, the segment featured a video mashup that included the winning video from the 2008 InnoCentive video Challenge.  This video was created by InnoCentive Solver  John Michael Zervoulei, who certainly had no idea when he submitted it that that his work would be featured on a prominent news program on a major network!

If you haven’t seen it, it’s worth viewing – the clip can be found here.  The “Power of the Crowd” segment begins at 16:10.

Congratulations to John, Giorgia and John Michael.

In an effort to improve your InnoCentive experience and get you the answers you need, we have made some upates to our Message Center.

You’ll be able to see the difference when you open your next project room – specifically, a logical division of sent vs. received messages.

To see the new Message Center, click on the Messages Tab or the Messages button on the right side of your project room. You will then be able to view messages for this Challenge from your Inbox or Sent tab. We think you’ll find this interface much easier to use.

As always, we value your feedback – please let us know if there is anything else we can do to enhance your InnoCentive Solving experience!

Attention InnoCentive Solvers!

Recommend a person who you think would like to be a Solver.  Someone who could create the next mosquito trap or enhance the next generation of BOGO lights for African villages. Or perhaps someone with creative ideas who loves to brainstorm about interesting concepts.  More Solvers mean more of the world’s Challenges can be solved and that means a bigger impact in the world.

The Solver who sends us the most new Solvers between August 1st and August 31st will not only win a check for $1,000 USD, but will also receive a $1,000 USD Global Giving Gift Card that can be used toward any charity on the Global Giving website.

Click on the button below to start referring Solvers. Get your contest referral link and forward to anyone you think would like to be a Solver. When friends or colleagues click on your link and register with InnoCentive, you’ll automatically get credit for referring them.

At the end of August, we will tally the number of Solvers referred, and the Solver who referred the most new registered Solvers will win the Send a Solver contest. The winner will receive a check for $1,000 and a $1,000 Global Giving Gift Card to donate to a Global Giving charity closest to his or her heart.

Sincerely,

The InnoCentive Team
www.innocentive.com

Please note the Send A Solver Contest (the “Contest”) is open to all registered Solvers (as defined in the InnoCentive Terms of Use ) who are legal residents of the 50 United States, the District of Columbia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia, age 18 years or older as of August 1, 2009. Void in Puerto Rico, Guam, The U.S. Virgin Islands, the Province of Quebec, and wherever taxed, prohibited or restricted by law. Employees (and their immediate families and household members) of InnoCentive, Inc. (the “Sponsor”) and its and their parents, subsidiaries, divisions, affiliates, participating vendors, distributors, advertising and promotion agencies and affiliated entities (collectively, the “Contest Entities”) are not eligible to win. By entering the Contest, entrants agree to accept and be bound by all terms of these Official Rules and Regulations (”Official Rules”).

I recently received this piece from Gabriel Eichler, one of our Client Services team members, and I wanted to share it with you all. He goes into detail on the important role that InnoCentive plays as a broker between the Seeker and you the Solver:

As most of our clients and members of our community already know, InnoCentive plays an important role in brokering Open Innovation interactions between Seeker organizations and you, our network of talented Solvers. Brokering such transactions is difficult since InnoCentive serves as a two-way firewall between the Seeker organization and Solver by keeping all parties anonymous throughout the process while simultaneously ensuring the integrity of the interaction. It occurred to me, however, that since most individuals interact with InnoCentive as either a Seeker or a Solver (and rarely both), they are unfamiliar with the actions undertaken by InnoCentive’s Client Services Team on behalf of both parties. To improve the understanding of both our Seekers and Solvers, I’ve dedicated this blog entry to a brief discussion on how InnoCentive’s Client Services Team supports these innovation interactions.

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What a wonderful day to announce the InnoCentive Top Solver Awards for 2007! I think it’s fitting that we launched the blog the same day that we honored the top Solvers, because after all this blog is devoted to our Solver community.

Announcing these awards is particularly bittersweet for me as in my role as Vice President of Client Services I have the opportunity to interact with most of our Solvers and these 11 individuals (yes, it was too difficult to round it down to 10) really stood out on top. These Solvers go to the heart of our mission statement they represent the human creativity and intelligence that makes our model work. Watching our Solvers in action and seeing these bright minds at work is truly gratifying.

Out of over 100 winning solvers last year, 11 Solvers top the leader board by either grossing at least $50,000 or by solving multiple Challenges in 2007. Of course we did have a couple of over-achievers in the group who met both criteria. Nikolay Barashkov, Ed Melcarek, Wenhui Zhang, Ming Zhou, Anatoly Chernyshev, Hegui Hu He, Sekhar Konjeti, James Mitchell, Dr. Ammanamanchi Radhakrishna, Eugeny Savin and Giorgia Sgargetta.

Each Top Solver will receive a crystal award and be recognized on the new “Top Solver” section of our website. From engineers and scientists to creative entrepreneurs, our Top Solvers are as diverse in their vocation as they are geographically – representing 7 countries. For more background on the winners, click here.

Lisa