5 Questions with Scott Pegau – Director of the Oil Spill Recovery Institute in Alaska
I recently interviewed Scott Pegau, Director of the Oil Spill Recover Institute (OSRI) in Cordova Alaska. OSRI was created by the government in response to the Exxon Valdez oil spill, and has been tasked with improving oil spill response in Arctic and subarctic marine waters. As you may know, OSRI has posted several Challenges on the InnoCentive website, including the Challenge, recently made famous by the New York Times, to separate oil from water in recovery barges. That Challenge was solved by John Davis, an oil-industry outsider. We find that many of the best solutions on our network come from outside the industry in which they are posted.
Liz Moise:
Scott, tell me – how long had you been working on this particular Challenge before coming to InnoCentive, and what other avenues did you pursue before coming to us for help with this problem?
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.
