Perspectives on Innovation

Mark Hudson, a Solver from the U.K., recently won the SAP Polestar Innovation Challenge.

I’m the co-founder and Vice President of Product Management at Antivia. After graduating from Leeds Metropolitan University (far too many years ago!) with a BSc (Hons) in Computing and being fascinated  by databases during that time (blimey – I must have been really boring!), I found the application of business intelligence and data warehousing came relatively naturally and inevitably found myself falling quickly into a career focused on business intelligence.

I was lucky enough to start my career right at the beginning of the BI explosion when there were a plethora of BI vendors to choose from. Vendors which are now unfortunately only fondly remembered by employees and ex-customers such as Holistic Systems and Crystal Decisions. My firm favourite has always been BusinessObjects and I have had the enviable opportunity during my career of having worked as a customer, a business partner and an employee of theirs.

My true passion has always been developing software, from very early days of developing basic games on my Commodore 64 to writing my own compiler at university. However, my problem was that I was always a better software designer than developer, hence my career in Product Management rather than Product Development.

In 1999 I realised two of my life goals, firstly to start my own business, secondly to design, develop and sell my own software. Blue Edge Software’s vision was to democratise the delivery of business intelligence information to all areas of an organisation. We grew the business to 15 employees, 15 blue chip customers with annual revenues in excess of $1m and in 2002 we were acquired by BusinessObjects.

Today at Antivia, I still get a huge kick out of designing software with my amazing team, solving real problems faced by organisations deploying business intelligence throughout their organisation. The InnoCentive Challenge that we won gave us yet another opportunity to show how we can solve these problems and has been a great platform for Antivia to showcase our innovative solutions for SAP BusinessObjects customers.

You can find me on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/in/markhudsonantivia

A few weeks ago, InnoCentive Solver Ed Herrmann Tweeted the following: “Just deposited my Innocentive check for the Polestar Challenge. Now I just need to decide what to buy; suggestions?” He received a few responses, including an enthusiastic suggestion to sponsor a happy hour in Phoenix.  In the end, he used the money to purchase a new server and an SDN Subscription. He’s planning to use the server to run the SAP Web Application Server which comes with the subscription, which will provide him with his own licensed SAP system to use for future SAP related InnoCentive Challenges.

Over the years, we’ve heard about Solvers using their winnings for all manner of things – from philanthropy to upgrading lab equipment to upgrading home entertainment equipment.  John Davis, winner of the OSRI oil spill Challenge is planning to use his winnings to fund a trip to Alaska, to help the Seeker, the Oil Spill Recovery Institute, develop and implement his solution.  In addition, he donated some of his winnings to OSRI to be used toward finding more environmentally friendly methods of cleaning up oil spills.

What about you?  What have you done with your winnings?  If you haven’t yet won an award, what do you think you would do?  Tell us!

SAP has provided a new resource for Solvers working on the Polestar Innovation Challenge. Ted Ueda, who works for SAP Business Objects has posted some sample API code on his blog to get you up and running quickly:

If you’re interested in Polestar OnDemand and the recently announced Polestar OnDemand API $20K IDEAtion Challenge, then this blog entry may be of interest to you. I’m going to present here a few sample codes for that API, so you’ll quickly get up to speed and have a head start on the competition!

Each of the sample codes follow the same workflow: retrieve data, upload the dataset to OnDemand, then view it in Polestar OnDemand. What differs is the programming language used and the data source. The four samples are:

1. Python script with inline dataSet.
2. C# with data retrieved from Query as a Web Service
3. Xcelsius SDK – Adobe Flex component.
4. Java with RSS Feed data.

Read the whole story here.

Hey SAP Solvers – did you know that now, in addition to having your own Challenge pavilion, containing Challenges specific to your expertise, you can also earn SCN points for submitting Solutions and for winning awards?

The announcement below is cross-posted from Martin Raepple’s SAP Developer Network blog:

Earning SCN Points with InnoCentive

Exciting news for all who have worked on any of the Challenges in the SAP Innovation & Technology Pavilion at InnoCentive: The SCN Contributor Recognition Program has been extended to award all SCN members who actively participate in SAP’s new Open Innovation program, announced this year at SAP TechEd Las Vegas. (more…)

Bob Fucci is InnoCentive’s SAP relationship manager. He has been at TechEd in Berlin this week, getting to know the European SAP community.

Greetings from Berlin!  As I write this, TechEd Berlin is wrapping up. The conference was attended by more than 10,000 SAP customers, partners, and prospects.  It’s a great testimony to SAP customer loyalty and the “trusted advisor” status SAP has earned.

It is a very interesting and fluid community. People seem to be trying to foster and develop an atmosphere of creativity and independence while at the same time finding a meaningful contribution to corporate performance. It’s quite interesting to see.

To my surprise, InnoCentive was the only SAP Partner highlighted by both Zia Yusuf and Leo Apothker during their keynote presentations. Both of them talked about the strategic nature of the partnership and urged attendees to visit our booth. SAP also announced that SDN members who register as Solvers will receive SDN points – a significant number of new registrations happened as a result.

At past SAP events, sales and customers drove the direction and the purpose of the discussion. The sales “white space” was filled with partners and the single focus is to sell more to clients. That’s less true at TechEd. The premium is about education – the “white space” is new and different ways to collaborate. It is much more about “individual brands”, personal stories, shared experiences and for InnoCentive the challenge to tap into that and build the story will be critical.

Our partner manager Martin Raepple, from SAP, won a “Top Achiever” award and was recognized in the keynote session. Congratulations Martin. Martin and I also posted a video that helps describe our partnership and our goals going forward.

Overall this event really opened my eyes to the opportunities presented by the partnership, and the enthusiasm of our global SAP audience.  Thanks to my SAP hosts for a terrific week!

Bob