According to the sponsor of the awards, Kalypso, the “Spike Awards recognize the best use of social strategies, processes, and supporting technologies to improve innovation, product development, and product management…The Awards celebrate forward-thinking innovators that leverage Social Product Innovation across the product lifecycle, including open innovation, crowdsourcing, expert identification, collaboration platforms, social product development and sentiment analysis.”

Our customer, Prize4Life, is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the discovery of treatments and cures for ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. The organization was founded by Avi Kremer, a Harvard Business School student diagnosed with ALS at the age of twenty-nine. In 2006, Prize4Life partnered with InnoCentive to launch the $1 million ALS Biomarker Prize. This Grand Challenge focused on finding a biomarker to measure the progression of ALS in patients, thereby facilitating the cost effective development of treatments by pharmaceutical and biotech companies.

The multi-stage Grand Challenge was launched via InnoCentive.com in 2006 and made available to InnoCentive’s Global Solver Community (which today is a quarter-million strong and growing). In 2007, as part of the first two stages of the Challenge, Prize4Life awarded several ‘thought’ prizes to encourage promising concepts. Of particular note, a dermatologist with no prior ALS experience was recognized and rewarded for applying a skin-elasticity method used in the cosmetic industry. This is a prime example of the importance of diversity in solving problem (and in fact, two-thirds of the teams competing for the prize came from outside the traditional ALS field). In total, partial awards totaling $175,000 went to six groups. In 2009, the third stage of the $1 million Grand Challenge was posted to InnoCentive’s Global Solver Community. Two years later (early 2011), the full $1 million amount was awarded to Dr. Seward Rutkove, a neurologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, for his biomarker discovery.

Dr. Rutkove developed a non-invasive test that measures the flow of a small electrical current through muscle tissue. Electrical current travels differently through healthy and diseased tissue, and by comparing the size and speed of the current, Dr. Rutkove’s method can accurately measure the progression of ALS. While the Grand Challenge process culminated in the identification of a biomarker, the five-year multi-stage Challenge process inspired many new ideas from new thinkers, some of whom had no prior ALS experience. These ideas may yield future promise both inside and outside the field of ALS. In fact, KineMed, a biotech company that was awarded one of the thought prizes, proposed a biomarker that has potential utility in Parkinson’s disease research. Prize4Life connected the company to the Michael J. Fox Foundation, and they are currently working together to develop the technology. In total, nearly 3,000 Solvers and over 100 solutions from dozens of countries were proposed over the course of the Prize4Life Grand Challenge.

“Participating in the challenge helped to refine my thinking,” said Dr. Rutkove. “It led me to apply my technology research specifically to ALS focusing on both the animal studies and device development. In our case, participation has effectively sped the development of a handheld device to sensitively measure disease progression.”

A wonderful story, and some well-deserved recognition for Prize4Life. Congratulations!

(If you’re interested in learning more about Grand Challenges, register to download our latest white paper, “Solving The World’s Toughest Challenges in Grand Fashion.”)

Today’s guest post is courtesy of Nate Hinchey, Communications Manager for Prize4Life.

In 16 years with the New York Yankees, Lou Gehrig played in 2,164 games. From 1925 to 1939, he played in 2,130 consecutive games. He played sick, and he played hurt. He played through slumps and stardom. Whenever Gehrig’s number was called, he stepped up to the plate. You aren’t born with a nickname like ‘The Iron Horse;’ you have to earn it. For 14 years, there was no force on heaven or earth that could keep Henry Louis Gehrig from playing baseball.

And then, on May 2^nd, 1939, after months of steadily declining performance, Lou benched himself and ended his streak. In June of that year, he received the diagnosis: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. ALS. Lou Gehrig’s disease. He would never play again.

More than 70 years later, there is still no cure for ALS.  That’s why Prize4Life was founded. Our CEO was diagnosed with the disease in 2004 at the age of 27. He knew that existing resources and research were not enough—something was needed to bring new minds and new money into the fight. Our model fills that need. Prize4Life offers large, cash prizes for targeted scientific breakthroughs that will help accelerate the search for a cure.

On Sunday, October 24^th, we will host our second annual 5K4Life, a road race aimed at raising awareness and funds to help us achieve our mission and bring us closer to eradicating ALS once and for all.

The race will take place at 11AM in Cambridge Center. There will be food, refreshments, music, gifts, and prizes for the top finishers and fundraisers. For more information, or to register for the race, visit www.5k4life.org.

Today, 30,000 Americans have ALS. Most will die within 3 years. The disease will strip from them all voluntary muscle movement. They will not be able to feed themselves, let alone run.

But you can. Stand in solidarity with the patients and families struggling with this disease, and join us on October 24^th.

Upon his death, Gehrig’s wife Eleanor said, “It was strange because there was no particular reason to keep playing without a break, no particular compulsion–except the fascination to add one more day, one more week, whatever you lost.”

As long as there is no cure for ALS, the reason seems clear: one more day, one more week may be all some people have. But we can change that.

For more information on Prize4Life, visit us at www.prize4life.org.

Today’s guest post is provided by winning InnoCentive Solver  Harvey Arbesman, and his wife Marian Arbesman.  Harvey won the Discovery Prize and the Thought Prize in the Prize4Life ALS Challenge. Harvey and Marian are innovation consultants who in 2002 founded ArbesIdeas, Inc., a research and consulting company devoted to innovation in the life sciences.  They’ll be contributing to this blog from time to time as part of our “Help a Solver Succeed” series.

“Discovery consists of seeing what everybody else has seen and thinking what nobody else has thought.” Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

What’s your vision for solving a Challenge?  Before you start working on a new project, how do you imagine yourself tackling the Challenge? Some people may imagine themselves struggling and toiling away in the middle of the night, while others see themselves walking along a windswept beach waiting for the moment when a great solution seems to come out of nowhere.  I’d like to share with you our approach for taking on and defining new Challenges, one that combines a variety of proven techniques for increasing innovation. While we may not be able to help you get around working in the middle of the night, and we definitely can’t provide the beach, we can help you with a streamlined and systematic approach that can take away some of the angst of finding new solutions and hopefully even make it fun.

The InnoCentive Solver community is enormous and diverse. Not only are Solvers found all over the world, but also they come from many different disciplines and have varying levels of expertise solving complex problems. This blog targets many different kinds of Solvers:  people interested in solving a problem who need some help to get started; those who have previously submitted solutions (and maybe even won), but would like some help making it happen more quickly; and those who are novices in a given area and need some ideas for how to get started.

Research consistently shows that innovation and creativity can be improved by learning specific strategies and methods. A systematic approach to problem solving is useful as it helps one first develop a firm grasp of the problem being solved, then moves on to the generation of lots of potential solutions for a problem, which is then followed by a third stage that helps the Solver pick the best potential solution and develop that solution. By leveling the problem solving playing field, a Solver is able to grasp concepts outside of his or her field, and bring well-developed expertise to the table.

A new Challenge arrives in your inbox, and before the adrenaline rush begins, you may start to question your expertise. Here are two simple steps to help you get a good handle on the Challenge and overcome those feelings of “no, this one just isn’t for me”.

Step 1. Read the Challenge and all of its details

Step 2. Read the Challenge again and immerse yourself in the problem that you are trying to solve. Really look at it and understand what the question/Challenge means. The Message Center in your project room is a great resource to ask the very qualified staff at InnoCentive for any clarifications that you need regarding the Challenge. How one person understands a question may differ from how it is viewed by another, and possibly may differ from how the Seeker views it (and in this case, the Seeker is the key interpreter of the question).  In addition, as you play with the Challenge in this early stage, get some feedback from friends, colleagues and family members, and start to think about a variety of ways how you might approach the problem, and what types of information and resources you would need to understand the Challenge.

Immersing yourself in the Challenge is the best way to be ready to develop new solutions to a problem. In future posts we will be discussing other ways (e.g., mapping the problem) to extend the immersion process. Immersing yourself in the Challenge helps you not get stuck in a given thought pattern and frees you to look at the Challenge from a totally different perspective than from your initial reaction to the Challenge.  Have fun with it, and keep in mind that this may be an opportunity to help change the world!

Harvey Arbesman, MD, MS
Marian Arbesman, PhD, OTR/L

I am a neurologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, having graduated from Cornell University and Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons. I completed my neurology training at the Harvard-Longwood Neurology Program and fellowship in clinical neurophysiology and neuromuscular disease at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston.

Since 1995, I have focused my career on taking care of people with neuromuscular disorders. This includes people with relatively mild problems such as carpal tunnel syndrome, to people with more severe diseases, such as muscular dystrophy and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Early on, I learned of the limitations of current diagnostic modalities for these conditions and became determined to improve upon them. For this reason, initially through collaboration with physicists at Northeastern University and more recently, with help from engineers at MIT, I have worked to develop and refine the technique of electrical impedance myography (EIM).  This technique offers the possibility of evaluating muscle painlessly and non-invasively. The research on EIM has been funded through multiple sources including the National Institutes of Health, the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Association, and the Spinal Muscular Atrophy Foundation. I was already in the process of collecting data on ALS patients when I learned of the ALS Biomarker Challenge through InnoCentive. This Challenge helped push me to improve upon our methods of data collection and to make our first handheld prototype device a reality (see http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/22415/).

I continue to explore and refine EIM techniques and their interpretation in the hope that they may one day be applied widely to help evaluate and treat anyone with a nerve or muscle disorder.