Perspectives on Innovation

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.

(more…)

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