Perspectives on Innovation

You know crowdsourcing has become mainstream when it is leveraged as a primary tool for selecting sessions and panels at an event/conference. Next year’s South by Southwest (SWSX) conference, an immensely popular event taking place in Austin Texas, features a “panel picker” that enables the crowd to cast a vote for the sessions they would like to see.

We’d like to engage our crowd to vote for a panel featuring the CEOs of  TopCoder and InnoCentive, Jack Hughes and Dwayne Spradlin, along with Jake Ward of Popular Science who will be moderating the panel.

The proposed panel, titled “Open Innovation: Millions of Us Solving Problems,” will discuss how open innovation and crowdsourcing can transform organizations, either through a breakthrough ‘eureka‘ idea or continuous and incremental improvement of a product or service. The panel will discuss what companies from Netflix to NASA to Toyota have gained from putting their biggest Challenges out in front of the general public, and how attendees can do the same. It will also uncover the key issues organizations need to address when incorporating open innovation communities into their own business plans, and how professional problem-solving communities will evolve in the coming years.

Please take a moment to register and vote!

By the way, as I was reading some of the comments on the registration page, I ran across this one from someone named John: “Interesting…crowd-sourced panel picking for a session on open innovation and crowdsourcing. Pretty appropriate I must say.”

We couldn’t agree more John.

For the last three years, InnoCentive has been posting marketing Challenges that showcase the diversity and creativity of InnoCentive Solvers, and to drive InnoCentive’s market awareness. These Challenges are aimed at not only involving the “artistic temperament” of our Solvers, but also to demonstrate to our Seekers that the InnoCentive Solver Community is a great resource for “voice of the customer” input for Challenges that are considered to be part of more “traditional” business domains, such as marketing.

Well, we’ve just posted our Fourth Annual InnoCentive Video Challenge! It’s called The Uniquely Prepared Mind, where we ask you to demonstrate the idea that a uniquely prepared mind is capable of solving even the most demanding Challenges the world has to offer. This is why the InnoCentive Solver is the perfect person to create this video – you know Solvers best and you are always up for a Challenge – pardon the pun.

This year, we’re guaranteeing $10,000 in awards for the best 30-second shorts that nail the 2011 Video Theme, The Uniquely Prepared Mind.

The first prize will receive a minimum of $5,000, and we’re guaranteeing $10,000 in awards. The top 20 runners-up will receive IC-branded shirts with the website’s new look and feel! Visit YouTube to see the 2010 winner and runners-up from previous years, then prepare your mind and submit a winner.

Clock is ticking! Check it out, open a Project Room, and share it, too!

We are pleased to announce that on Thursday, February 25th, 2010, InnoCentive will be launching a new home page. The primary goal of the new home page is to make it easier for you to find Challenges that interest you. As soon as you launch the page you’ll see a listing of all open Challenges, which can be sorted by date, award amount, popularity or subject matter.  We also have selected a few Featured Challenges that we think may be of interest, or you can go directly to the “Challenge Center” to see all open Challenges.  You can also access open Challenges by clicking the “Challenge Center” tab at the top of the page.

To access your “My InnoCentive” page, click the tab on the far right.  In addition, the home page will provide more information about InnoCentive, other Solvers and some of our Innovation partners.  Below is a snapshot of how the page will look:

We hope you like the new look and functionality. This is just the first step in series of website enhancements, and we will keep you posted along the way.

Another exciting advancement this week is the introduction of Solver and Seeker Discussion Forums.  You will have the opportunity to further participate in the InnoCentive community and discuss topics centered around innovation and problem solving.  Only registered InnoCentive users may post comments but all web-site visitors will have access to read the latest topics in these forums.

BBC News published a story today about innovation in the UK beer market. The UK brewing industry has been on the decline for the past few years, and with a slowdown in the economy pushing consumers toward more affordable brands, the high-end brands have been struggling to innovate without alienating the customers that have remained loyal.

The article discusses some of the more successful innovation ideas (pineapple, anyone?) and some that are still on the shelf, waiting for an audience, including one depicted in a disturbing “frankenbeer” image of what happens when lager and food coloring combine.

One firm that has been successful in innovation is Guinness, which patented the original widget that makes canned beer taste more like draft. Despite a general slowdown in the market, Guinness has managed a 2% gain in sales from last year. The company is testing Guinness Red, which will be lighter in color and taste than regular Guinness, and is aimed at consumers who like the brand but only drink it on rare occasions.  

It’s an interesting story – and a great example of the need for innovation in a mature market.

Many of you have been impacted by the story of SunNight Solar, and their BoGo light (Buy One, Give One). Founded by former US Diplomat Mark Bent, SunNight Solar uses the latest scientific advances in solar and lighting technology to provide light to people in developing countries. When you purchase a light from them, they match your purchase and send a light to the location of your choice. SunNight Solar posted a Challenge to the InnoCentive Marketplace to improve their existing light, so that it could illuminate an entire room as well as work as a handheld flashlight. The Challenge was solved and the company has already begun production of these improved lights, less than a year after posting the Challenge. I recently asked Mark for an update on this exciting project – his thoughts are below:

My name is Mark Bent, and I posted the Challenge to improve the design of my original solar flashlight on Innocentive.  This need for improvement came as a direct result of feedback from World Bank and Department of Energy field research on my lights in Africa.  People liked the original device, but it did not replace a kerosene lantern, because it did not light up a room.  After trying, and failing, to develop a light which had this feature, I turned to Innocentive, with support from the Rockefeller Foundation.

Within the next ten days – by the end of October 2008, we will have a second factory come on line to produce our lights – the original factory cannot keep up with the demand.  Via Innocentive, our electronics and other components are pretty amazing and the lights have been very, very welcomed by the consumer and are in use worldwide.

We are starting up a new program to get these lights to our military serving in Iraq and Afghanistan – the SL-2 – SunLight 2, or SuperBoGo, was so well received by the Marines and soldiers, we wanted to do another program to get them more lights – please see http://www.warlights.com/.  These will be camouflage lights – not a good idea to carry bright orange lights in a war zone and the combat soldiers probably would not appreciate the pink lights much either.

We continue to improve this model and will be coming out with variations in the very near future, both in appearance and in function – lights which cure jaundice in infants via blue LEDs will be the next light and we have many more versions planned.

Thanks InnoCentive and thanks to all of the customers who support our BoGo Lights and other social programs.

Best regards,

Mark

CEO – SunNight Solar
Mark Bent

http://www.sunnightsolar.com/blog/