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.

Scott Pegau:
Actually, the process of setting up a prize program predates my arrival at OSRI.  The idea had been kicked around for a couple years, but hadn’t fully developed because of the need to ensure the program was properly run and advertised.  Once InnoCentive was identified as a mechanism to post and manage challenges we started to actually draft the concepts that have become the challenges we have released.

LM:
Do you have plans to implement this solution soon?

SP:
Since it was a theoretical solution we are very interested in seeing if the theory will work as well in practice as we think it will.  We are developing the groundwork to test it this winter once conditions get cold enough.  We probably would have done the test a year ago, but we needed to arrange it in our budget cycle and design a test program.

LM:
What impact to you expect this solution to have on recovery efforts, and the environment in Alaska?

SP:

The challenge was for an application most likely to be needed in the Arctic.  We haven’t had a need for the equipment to be used in the past, but the need to have the capability to empty tanks in very cold conditions has been identified for a while.  With luck and care we will never need the solution to be used, but it nice to know we will be able to transfer oil out of holding tanks if a spill does occur.

LM:
It sounds like much of your work is preventative, which is great to hear. I hear you have recently posted two new Challenges on the same topic in our Clean Tech and Renewable Energy Pavilion. Can you tell me a bit about them, and what you hope the solutions will mean for your work in Alaska?

SP:
We actually posted three new Challenges recently.  All three are theoretical and address issues that we face on a regular basis.  The first is a means to keep recovery equipment from freezing up.  When it is below zero and you run equipment in water it starts to have ice building up on it.  We need a method to prevent the ice from forming within the capabilities of the ships deploying the equipment and without adding a lot of material to the oil that is recovered.

The second challenge is to develop a boom system that will work in broken ice.  Booms are commonly used to either collect oil or protect areas.  The problem is that ice ranges in size from very small to very large so it can either clog a system or crush it.  We need a system that can collect oil without collecting ice.

Our third challenge is for a means to detect oil in inclement weather such as fog or rain.  When visibility is poor it is hard for the recovery vessels to be able to detect where the oil is so that they go to the proper area to begin cleaning.  We are looking for a way for the boat captains to see where the oil is when they can’t use their eyes.

LM:
What kinds of opportunities are there for Solvers to impact the environment in a positive way, by working on these Challenges?

SP:
These challenges are all designed to improve our ability to respond to an oil spill.  With increased development in Arctic waters we need to ensure we can respond if there is an accident.  The primary plan is to prevent spills from occuring, but if there is one we need to have the best tools to respond with in order to minimize environmental damage.

One summer I gained some experience pouring concrete, and I used some of what I learned from that experience to help solve the InnoCentive Challenge “Breaking Viscous Shear of Crude Oil”. Concrete vibrators are used to allow the concrete to easily flow into fine cracks and crevices, and also are used to restore liquid flow to concrete that has begun to set-up prematurely. I realized that with some minor modifications, pneumatic concrete vibrators could solve the problem of Breaking the Viscous Shear of Crude Oil by restoring liquid flow to the icy slush mixture.

I plan to take a vacation and visit OSRI in Cordova Alaska when it gets warmer. It means a lot to me to know that my Innocentive Solution was used by OSRI because their work is so important. It is very exciting to know that my idea is helping their cause. I intend to make a donation to OSRI with some of the award money so that they can find the most environmentally friendly means to clean up oil spills.

For more details on my story, click here to watch my video on YouTube.