InnoCentive Blog

My name is Nikolay Barashkov - “I am not sure that one should really speak of "failures" just because some proposals are not rewarded. Over the years, several dozens of my solutions have come short of winning and yet, from my personal experience, I can conclude that there is always something positive in such types of ‘failure’.”

My name is Doug Corrigan - “The reason that there is a challenge in the first place is because there are already experts who have not been able to solve the challenge. If it was easily solved by subject matter experts in that field, it wouldn’t have become a challenge. “

My name is Dmitry Tipkin - “My favorite challenge I worked on was for NASA concerning the radiation safety for trips to Mars. I proposed an engineering solution about a special type of magnetic field for concentration of high energy protons in special places inside the ship instead of full redirection of them.”

My name is Ed Melcarek - “It dawned on me that these types of problems can be solved only if you have “too diverse a set of skills and experience”. Something that the corporate world frowns upon.”

My name is Yury Bodrov - “My most inspired challenge was participating in the NASA Challenge. All of us dream of space in our childhood and for many, I’m sure, this dream remains when we become adults.”

My name is Deepak Aghor - “I believe that the solution to a problem lies in the problem itself”

My name is Sanchita Tewari  - “Become a winning Solver marked a significant step in my professional career and an important event of my life. This was the first time I received recognition and reward from an international authority and it was a life changing experience for me and my family.”

My name is John Davis - “I came up with a method to break the viscous shear of crude oil under cold weather conditions helping to clean up a 20 year old oil spill from the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster.”

My name is Hannah Safford - “I was first introduced to the concept of innovation challenges and prizes during my two-year fellowship in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) under the Obama administration.”

My name is Madhavi Muranjan - “There is no greater thrill in the “chase”, the mystery solving and the detective work than you get out of the challenges mother nature puts out for us all, and that feeling of solving her challenges I wouldn’t trade for anything else.”

My name is Michael Kardauskas - “My mother bought us a set of children’s encyclopaedias, which explained everything from photosynthesis to how the pyramids might have been built, and my father subscribed to Popular Science magazine, which touted all the latest inventions that might revolutionize the future – flying cars, etc.  I devoured both of them and thought the greatest possible career would be to be an inventor.”

My name is Seward Rutkove - “This challenge helped push me to improve upon our methods of data collection and to make our first handheld prototype device a reality”