In 2011, we added many thousands of people to our Global Solver Community.  We distributed more than $2m in Challenge awards.  And we welcomed Popular Science and EDF as strategic partners, resulting in a wealth of new Challenges for Solvers to tackle and an expanded pool of diverse minds for our Seekers to tap into.  We elevated Novel Molecule Compound (NMC) Challenges, providing higher award amounts and introducing fingerprinting technology, which resulted in greater uptake in Solver engagement and renewed confidence from our Seekers, ultimately leading to a doubling of NMC Challenges posted and solved as compared to 2010.

But we did something much more important. We accomplished the goal we set for ourselves when we embarked on this journey together – and I don’t say this lightly – we changed the world.  Together we brought solutions to light that would never have been uncovered any other way.  Below are a few of the Challenges that were awarded in 2011 that I’m particularly proud of.

Prize4Life – this was our “walk on the moon” Challenge.  The big, audacious goal that we weren’t sure was even achievable, but was so important that it carried a $1m award.  First launched in 2006, the Prize4Life Challenge sought a biomarker for ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease – a rare disease with such a rapid rate of advancement that there was literally no way to measure its progression.   In 2011, Solver Seward Rutkove was awarded the full $1m for his biomarker, which used a method called electrical impedance myography (EIM)  to measure the flow of a small electrical current through muscle tissue.  This biomarker has the potential to reduce the cost of Phase II clinical trials by more than 50%, and by correlating closely with disease progression, to remove one of the primary obstacles to industry investment in potential ALS therapies.

EDF Nitrate Capture System – PhD candidate Patrick Fuller submitted an innovative solution for the capture of toxic nitrates – and won the award on his first Challenge.  This solution could mitigate the 50-80% of fertilizer applied to commercial crops in the U.S. that is not absorbed by plants and is instead lost to water and air, causing dangerous environmental and health impacts in a growing number of watersheds around the country.

Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Games for Health – anyone who has cared for a chronically sick child knows the challenges that adolescence brings.  The increasing need for independence and social interaction makes following a prescribed health regimen difficult.  Cincinnati Children’s Hospital came up with a unique approach to inspire teenagers and pre-teens to take care of themselves – a video game.  The solution to this Challenge has the potential to dramatically improve health care outcomes for sick kids.  We’ll have more news on this solution in the coming weeks.

Humanitarian Air Drop – The Challenges posted by the Air Force Research Labs have truly captured the attention of our Solvers and of the media.  Of the seven posted so far, the humanitarian air drop Challenge hits closest to home for me.  The notion that distribution of aid to the most vulnerable communities, often in the middle of a war zone, could actually cause harm to people needing that aid, is difficult to accept.  Two Solvers, one from Indonesia and one from Peru, solved the Challenge, one of them referencing a well-known mechanism for moving coal from a mine shaft.  This is a perfect example of diversity and the uniquely prepared mind at work, as my colleague and InnoCentive Co-Founder Alph Bingham might say.

These Challenges represent just a few of the highlights of 2011.  The year 2012 is positioned to be even more impactful – we’ll be awarding new delivery options for the polio vaccine, better sanitation for billions of people in developing countries, and viable disposal options for environmentally toxic electronics.  Over the coming weeks and months we’ll be posting new Challenges that promise to be just as interesting, fulfilling, and earth shattering as those we saw in 2011.

Thank you for your continued participation in the InnoCentive Solver Community.

Warmest regards,
Dwayne

The article, Want Innovative Thinking? Hire from the Humanities by Tony Golsby-Smith, is about the importance of diversity in the workplace – the diversity of thought, knowledge and academic background. Many of our Solvers have solved InnoCentive Challenges that are outside their sphere of expertise, but because of their cerebral dexterity, coupled with imagination, experience, knowledge and adaptability, have allowed them to solve Challenges that the domain’s owner had not envisioned. Case in point: Solver Bruce Cragin is a semiretired radio frequency engineer who won the NASA Challenge “Data-Driven Forecasting of Solar Events.” The Challenged was looking for a suitable method to more reliably predict the particle storms originating with solar events. Though Cragin had various degrees & experiences in physics, engineering and as a radio frequency engineer, he’d never worked in the area of solar physics. His experience with image analysis skills, interest in “small comet hypothesis” and curiosity about the theory of magnetic reconnection” enabled him to connect the dots.

Golsby-Smith does not address related disciplines in his article, but he goes one step further and recommends hiring graduates that are not only in science, business or economics, but in the humanities. He argues that these graduates are taught how to navigate look up and out to question and discover the “unknowns”. Graduates of philosophy, drama, literature, ethics, history, etc are, by the very nature of their subject matter, taught to “play with big concepts” – to observe people and situations, to be curious, to consider “why”, what were they thinking”, “what if”, etc.  This is the kind of thinking that needs to be included in a world full of analytics, reasoning, and dissection, when faced with “a murky future”.

It is an interesting article and has elicited quite a lot of comments. Check it out here.

I am currently a second year MBA student at the Yale School of Management. I graduated from Indian Institute of Technology in 2006 with a major in Electrical Engineering. Thereafter, I worked with British Telecom as a consultant where I was primarily involved in strategy and planning. At BT, I held a cross functional profile that spanned around Crisis Management, Strategy, Technology, Finance and Project and Vendor Management. I am passionate about the telecom/technology sector and am extremely interested in the emerging markets. I will graduate from Yale School of Management in May, 2011.

At Yale, my interests lie in Strategy, Finance and Technology. I spent the last summer with Zephyr Management, a Private Equity fund in NYC. I also interned with IBM in Business Performance Services. I head the South Asian Business Forum at the School of Management and am also a member of the organizing team of Asia Tomorrow- Yale’s premier student run conference.

Sasha Vyash, my team mate, is a second year MBA student at Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. She has a master’s degree in Economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University (India). She is actively involved in the South Asian Business Association and consulting club at Tuck. She has extensive experience in the retail and analytics industry. Before Tuck, she worked for an Analytics firm called Dunnhumby. At Tuck, she majors in Marketing and Strategy. She spent the last summer with Fidelity and would be joining McKinsey & Co. in June, 2011. She has a huge interest in economic development and emerging markets.

Having spent a major part of lives in India, we have been constantly exploring areas and opportunities for development in the emerging markets. Emerging markets, due to the dynamic, ever changing landscape presents a challenge to the entire business community. There are principally two challenges involved here- to construct innovative business models that are sustaining and more importantly, touch the base of the pyramid. In our opinion, emerging markets are revolutionary because there is a huge room for innovation and entrepreneurship in these regions. As we challenged ourselves to come up with good solutions, we heard of the Economist Innocentive challenge. This was an excellent platform for us to showcase our idea and also gather feedback and response from the rest of the innocentive community. We have a good mix in our team. I have a background in engineering. So, I have a good grasp of things from an implementation perspective. Sasha has a background in Economics thereby proving the bigger macroscopic picture. In addition, both of us being MBAs have a fair knowledge of the other factors that are crucial for a sustainable business model. Winning the challenge has been absolutely thrilling for us and we definitely look forward to solve more challenges here!

Summary of the Proposal

Our idea revolves around leveraging the telecom revolution in emerging markets and using sophisticated analytics techniques to enhance the agriculture value chain. Our tool- Agro-Engine would help identify trends and deliver unique insight to farming communities, processing plants and retails giants that would help them in investment management and portfolio optimization. The scope of this tool is huge in emerging markets.

Background: The advent of 3G services (in developed and emerging markets) has laid the foundation of a seamless information exchange platform that would connect the rural markets. The challenge lies in bridging the huge digital divide and using this to further advance the rural population. Presently, a large number of farmers allocate their resources based on their legacy and word of mouth. Processing plants and retail majors have no ways to identify or predict future supply and thus cannot optimize their investments.

We propose the conceptualization of a data driven, Portfolio Management Tool that would help the industry identify trends based on historic data and performance. The tool is apt for developed economies where there is already sufficient telecom penetration. Agro-Engine would aid farming communities and large corporate giants in the retail and agriculture sector in allocating their resources and optimizing their portfolio. For example, a typical farmer’s portfolio would consist of crops he intends to grow on his land. Our analytics tool would incorporate multiple inputs such as previous track record, financial constraints, risk appetite and time to market. The tool would leverage the 3G revolution in developing economies through rural penetration and existing rural infrastructure. With increased usage and data availability, the tool would become more and more robust and gain credibility in identifying trends and delivering useful recommendations.

Inventors & innovators from around the world gathered in Geneva every year to highlight their “brainchild” products in the hopes of attracting buyers or investors. These inventors were either groups representing companies and universities, some were independent researchers and some were individuals, like our Solver “tinkerers,” who simply had good ideas that they took the time and effort to translate into prototypes and products.

This year, there were 765 creative hopefuls from 45 countries displaying 1000 wonderful, wacky and downright wonky gadgets. The variety of applications was mind-numbing, as were the impulses behind these creations. One gentleman created a “self-making bed” that spreads its own bed-sheets at the push of a button. His reasoning was a beautiful combination of altruism – to help people who are unable to move easily and therefore make their beds – and self-serving – he claimed laziness! Another person created an artificial nose-hair device to help ward-off his antihistamine-hating wife’s allergies. A Frenchman who runs a retirement home felt bad that many of his horticulture-loving residents couldn’t work in the garden because bending over was difficult. He designed a vertical garden – a pyramidal wooden framework full of soil & plants.

Many devices had environmental, medical, and labor-intensive applications. Some were a little more whimsical. There was the “fastest shrimp peeling device ever invented” because the creator loved shrimps but hated peeling them, and a delightful little alarm-clock that ran around the room when it’s alarm went off, forcing the sleepy-head to get out of bed to catch offending time-piece in order to switch of the clamor.

Some other inventions that caught my eye were:

• A “super smart boot” created by Iranian Payman Sarhadi. The boots can cool or heat the feet, measure radiation levels and collect air temperature, humidity, location and blood pressure data, and then transmit it back to a base camp. It is, as Paymen surmised, “useful.”
• Emanuele Lopopolo of Italy presented a portable backrest that allows its wearer to take a break from standing by leaning back onto a telescopic pole.
• Taiwan’s Juang Ying-Shen show-cased her high heel pumps with interchangeable components (like different heels).
• An oven-like machine from a South Korean inventor that dries kitchen garbage to eliminate bacteria and odor and turn it into a solid fuel. Heeja Lee already sells this machine in Asia.

There is even a competition at the exhibition. This year’s Grand Prix prize when to Swiss native Mr. Louis Conzett and his company AYTON for a new system that protects housing against floods.

The event sounds like the very place for our inventive Solvers to gather and show-off their creations. An invention must be patented and it can be submitted only once to the show. The exhibition apparently always takes place in Geneva, and the website (www.inventions-geneva.ch) has all the application forms. Check it out – who knows, maybe next year our very own InnoCentive Solver will be the Grand Prix winner.

When you click on the External Challenges tab you will see a list of the almost one hundred challenges we’ve processed so far. These challenges have been pulled from all over the web, by organizations ranging from Starbucks to NASA, and are updated regularly. If an opportunity presents itself, you can find out about it here.

The types of challenges range from colossal projects like the NASA Centennial Challenges, to student technical paper competitions and awareness projects geared towards children (which are a great way to get kids involved in open innovation!). These challenges welcome participants from almost any background.

Open innovation is about finding creative solutions to problems, and the world is teeming with problems. We’re going to make it as easy as we can to connect you with those problems. Good solutions need to be found for these challenges, and you’re the best community to do it.