Perspectives on Innovation

I am not a fan of research for the sake of research. I like to see a direct application of my work. In this regard, InnoCentive is a gift from heaven for me. I have always been interested in applying my research and reasoning skills to practical problems. It is this kind of need that fires my imagination. If there is a problem that needs to be solved, I want to contribute to the solution.

I get a real kick out of working on a subject that is far from my inner sphere of expertise, especially when my ideas turn out to be good. Winning two InnoCentive Challenges, one on corrosion detection and the other on sulfur encapsulation for lubrication applications, are some of the achievements of which I am most proud. Of course I have rendered many other solutions that were not accepted. (Ed Melcarek and Nikolay Barashkov are strong competition!). But I did enjoy formulating them and I shall continue to send in proposed solutions, for who knows, maybe they will turn out to be valuable and, yes, lucrative.

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After a 30-year career in Chemical Science both in academia and in the industry, I have a confession to make; Creative research is my passion and my addiction. Because of this, my routine everyday activities never interested me enough to occupy all my attention. As a result, when I saw the InnoCentive advertisement in “Chemical and Engineering News” back in 2004 I checked out their web site. After going through the descriptions of the Challenges I immediately found one of interest.

After doing research and some experimental work during my spare time, my original and excellent (I thought so anyway) solution was ready for submission. I submitted it and waited for the standard two-month waiting period, before receiving notice from InnoCentive that my solution had not been selected for the award.

I was disappointed, but now, three years later, when I look back I am glad that this first unsuccessful attempt has not stopped me from trying. In fact, in retrospect, it was not failure at all. In the fall of 2006, when I revisited the InnoCentive website, I submitted not one, but two solutions. I am pleased to say that I was awarded for my solution of one of them, “Color Changing Ingredient,” in January 2007.

Within the last year I submitted three provisional patents based on “unsuccessful” solutions to the US Patent Office. One was selected for submission for the 2nd Annual Inventor Awards organized by Popular Science Magazine. I’m keeping my fingers crossed until June 2008 when the results will be released.

By now I’ve won five InnoCentive rewards and earned a substantial amount of money. Nobody disagrees that money is important, but what may be even more important for me is the unforgettable feeling that my idea was able to help with the specific Seeker’s case.

I do not remember exactly when I joined the InnoCentive community but I remember that I was skeptical about the concept of InnoCentive. I was concerned that I might lose intellectual property rights if I disclosed my ideas for a problem that was not chosen for the winning solution.Despite this I decided to try it and submitted a solution for a theoretical problem in 2003, Biological Targets for Inflammation. This problem required me to identify five new biological targets for the discovery and development of pharmaceuticals to treat inflammation. The proposed targets needed to be the ones to which no FDA-approved drug is known. A scientific literature search yielded a few targets which I proposed in my solution. However, because I was so skeptical about the system, instead of proposing five targets, I wrote only three targets thinking that it was a waste of my time. To my surprise, two of the targets I proposed were selected for the award.

Over the next three years I did not see many Challenges that interested me. I submitted 2 or 3 solutions without much enthusiasm. I usually selected the Challenges that required only written solutions and did not require me to do actual experiments to validate the solution.

My curiosity in drug discovery led me to actively participate in another Challenge in 2006 even though I knew nothing about Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD). After reading the strategies and descriptions of the treatments in the Challenge, I immediately knew the solution but confirmed it by conducting a literature survey.

I was concerned that it was not a drug that is approved by FDA or in clinical trials, it was an over the counter supplement, resveratrol (It has been disclosed in the DMDetank web site). I was not sure whether the Seeker would accept a supplement in the proposal but I thought if it works, it can be easily administered without much hassle or FDA approval. I couldn’t believe it when my proposal was selected and the Seeker started testing the drug on mice. It gives me pleasure to know that the recent scientific literature has confirmed further the usefulness of resveratrol. This is one of my favorite solutions due to its implications for possible future treatment for those that suffer from DMD and have to take lots of pills daily. This will reduce the number of pills an individual has to take if proven effective in animal/human testing.

2007 was an exciting year for me with three winning solutions and recognition as one of the Top Solvers by InnoCentive. It is exciting to see the different problems facing the industry in one place. Several of the problems the drug discovery industry is facing seem simple, but after looking at the description one will realize how big the problem is.

Many of the industrial problems are never seen or heard outside of the industry. InnoCentive is helping the drug discovery industry by grouping scientists/researchers with various backgrounds and posting problems from various disciplines so that registered users can see the description of the Challenge in one place. This is something I really like about InnoCentive. I encourage everyone to read each Challenge posted even if it doesn’t fall into your area of expertise and to search on the Internet to get some information on the problem which will help in thinking about the solution in a novel way.