Wazoku Blog

InnoCentive is now part of Wazoku

HOUSTON, July 7 — The Space Life Sciences Directorate (SLSD) at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston has selected three winning solutions to address astronaut health and performance issues.

Full and partial financial awards were offered for solutions to three Challenges posted on the NASA Innovation Pavilion on www.InnoCentive.com, an open innovation marketplace with a global network of more than 200,000 problem solvers. A total of 1,317 Solvers from 65 countries opened “project rooms,” representing interest in assessing the Challenges. Ultimately, 128 submissions were received and evaluated for the three NASA Challenges.

The open innovation competition is a key component of SLSD’s broader framework for innovation, driven by its strategic plan. “Our first three Challenges yielded outstanding results,” said Dr. Jeffrey R. Davis, director of Space Life Sciences. “As an organization, we’ve learned a great deal about the process, and we were pleased with such widespread participation. The technology results led to new insights for food packaging, a compact exercise device and prediction capabilities for solar events. All of these findings are important new leads to enable long-duration human spaceflight.”

The NASA Innovation Pavilion provides Solvers the opportunity to develop innovative solutions to the unique challenges faced by NASA in achieving its mission to pioneer the future of space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research. Solutions to these Challenges will benefit not only space exploration but also may further the development of commercial products and services in many industries on Earth.

“Accelerating the solutions to problems which affect astronauts will have a major impact on the future of our space program,” said Davis.

“We are thrilled to see the success of these Challenges and the applicability of the solutions to a much broader range of problems in far-reaching fields. InnoCentive is pleased to work with NASA to apply the power of open innovation and the expertise of our Solver community to explore new approaches to significant problems in the aerospace industry,” said Dwayne Spradlin, CEO of InnoCentive.

Phase 1 of the competition was kicked off with three JSC Challenges. A fourth was later added by NASA’s Langley Research Center, and an award is pending. Three new Challenges were posted on the NASA Innovation Pavilion (https://gw.innocentive.com/ar/challenge/browse?pavilionName=NASA&pavilionId=463) on May 27 with a deadline of July 27.

The first two Challenges were Theoretical Challenges, which implement an idea but are not yet a proof of concept and require a written proposal only. They were evaluated on a theoretical basis considering the current state-of-the-art knowledge.

Yury Bodrov, a scientist from Saint Petersburg, Russia, won a partial award for his proposal of a new flexible graphite material for food packaging that is lightweight, has improved barrier properties, is compatible with sterilization processes and NASA disposal requirements and can maintain food quality over a three-year shelf life. Alex Altshuler, a mechanical engineer from Foxboro, Mass., won a full award for his proposal for a compact aerobic and resistive exercise device, which delivers the proper motions for exercises in space under very limited or zero gravity and meets very specific size and space requirements.

The third Challenge resulted in a full award to Bruce Cragin, a retired radio frequency engineer from Lempster, N.H., for his proposed solution for forecasting solar activity, which poses a significant radiation exposure risk to both humans and hardware during space exploration. Until now there has been no method available to predict the onset, intensity or duration of a solar particle event. Cragin’s solution allows for a 24-hour forecast window of event onset with 75 percent accuracy. This challenge was called a Reduction to Practice Challenge, which results in a prototype that proves an idea and requires the Solver to submit a validated solution.

“The forecasting solar activity submission was thorough. It addresses the challenge requirements and exceeds them with respect to forecast confidence above random prediction,” said Dr. Dan Fry, scientist, Space Radiation Analysis Group.

The fourth Challenge is a Theoretical Challenge for coordination of sensor swarms for extra-terrestrial research.

For information about NASA and agency programs on the Web, visit: www.nasa.gov

InnoCentive is now part of Wazoku

WALTHAM, Mass. – June 15, 2010 – InnoCentive, Inc., the world leader in open innovation, today announced that it has launched InnoCentive@Work 3, the third generation of its @Work enterprise platform for collaborative, Challenge-driven innovation during this week’s Enterprise 2.0 conference being held in Boston. The product extends clients’ ability to solve critical business and technical problems by tapping the diverse thinking of communities both inside and outside of a company.

“To compete in today’s economy, companies must find ways to innovate faster with their current resources,” said David Ritter, CTO of InnoCentive. “Open innovation is now an essential core capability. This product allows organizations to utilize the power of diverse knowledge and collaboration to solve important business challenges— regardless of where solutions are hiding within the company or in its broader ecosystem.”

InnoCentive@Work is a comprehensive suite of tools and services that help organizations create and leverage Web-based collaborative communities for problem solving. Unlike “idea management” or “social networking” products, InnoCentive@Work applies InnoCentive’s proven Challenge methodology to drive innovation with measurable business results.

InnoCentive@Work was developed in close collaboration with Eli Lilly and Company and other enterprise clients. According to Bret E. Huff, vice president, chemical PR&D at Lilly, “InnoCentive@Work has already had tremendous impact at Lilly. With well over 100 Challenges run inside the firm, 80 percent of the important problems posted through the system have been at least partially solved. In many cases, people with backgrounds or roles outside of the specific problem area have made insightful contributions to the solution. With the increased flexibility of InnoCentive@Work version three, we expect to engage even more broadly with external communities such as consultants and partners to fuel innovation.”

The new InnoCentive@Work offering was developed for companies that wish to more effectively tap the talent and insight already present in their employees, partners, and customers. InnoCentive@Work has the unique ability to present each critical problem to a variety of communities that may provide a solution. With each community of potential Solvers, InnoCentive@Work increases the likelihood of finding breakthrough solutions by adapting to the community’s optimal style of working and collaborating.

The product also provides a logical first step toward true open innovation. New features include:

Private Pavilions — Allowing customers the ability to extend the use of @Work beyond their corporate walls to non-employees or a pre-defined group of Solvers who may be employees, contractors, retirees, alumni, academics and other company invited guests. This feature is unique to InnoCentive and not available through other innovation platforms.

Adaptive Voting and Rating — For each Challenge, voting can be configured to capture the feedback of the problem solving community in the way most appropriate to the community. Unlike other systems, voting in InnoCentive@Work offers flexible options that adapt to the way the group wishes to collaborate— including the ability to limit the visibility of voting to subsets of users.

Search — All content within InnoCentive@Work is fully indexed—Challenge content, solutions, and collaborative discussions—and accessible through a simple but powerful faceted search tool. The accumulated set of Challenges and solutions can quickly become a client’s most valuable knowledge asset.

Additional features within the third generation InnoCentive@Work product include:

• Fully threaded discussions — Collaboration occurs in a natural discussion flow, with problem solver contributing and building on each other’s solutions. “Nested comments” help preserve the context of the discussion among users.
• Fully Integrated Awards Process — The owner of a Challenge easily assigns points directly to the relevant discussion posts then publishes the results, giving immediate feedback to the problem solvers. The award process also captures key metrics that capture and document the value created through each Challenge.
• Community Management — Administrators control the creation of groups of users, allowing full control over the audience for each Challenge. Separate groups can be established including internal employees, external partners, or a combination of problem solvers from both inside and outside the firm.

InnoCentive@Work complements SharePoint implementations and can integrate with existing platforms to make them work better for an organization, resulting in measurable ROI in a matter of months, not years.

Pricing and Availability

InnoCentive@Work 3 is available immediately and has been automatically updated to existing users. For new customers, pricing includes a one-time implementation charge and monthly subscription fee. Training and services are fully integrated with the product to ensure that the platform creates impact.

About InnoCentive, Inc.

Since 2001, InnoCentive has helped corporate, government, and non-profit organizations to better innovate through crowdsourcing, strategic consulting services and internal Software-as-a-Service offerings. The company built the first global Web community for open innovation where organizations or “Seekers” submit complex problems or “Challenges” for resolution to a “Solver” community of more than 200,000 engineers, scientists, inventors, business professionals, and research organizations in more than 200 countries. Prizes for winning solutions are financial awards up to US $1,000,000. Committed to unleashing diverse thinking, InnoCentive continues to introduce new products and services exemplifying a new corporate model where return to investors and individual passion go hand in hand with solving mankind’s most pressing problems. https://www.innocentive.com/

Karyn Martin
Emerge PR for InnoCentive
kmartin@emergepr.com
617-729-3173

Connie French
InnoCentive Marketing Director
press@innocentive.com

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June 15, 2010

InnoCentive is now part of Wazoku

WALTHAM, MA–(Marketwire – January 27, 2010) – InnoCentive, Inc., the world leader in open innovation, today announced that it is partnering with GlobalGiving and the Rockefeller Foundation to help several GlobalGiving partner organizations find solutions to dire water-related problems facing their local communities. For the first time, these organizations have combined efforts to crowdsource not only Challenge questions and their solutions, but also the funding to implement the winning solutions. As a part of this new GlobalGiveback Innovation Challenge Set, InnoCentive also achieved its 1,000th Challenge posting, a significant milestone.

According to a 2008 UNICEF/World Health Organization report, 884 million people, or one in eight, lack access to safe water supplies. The WHO reports that over 3.5 million people die each year from water-related disease, and less than 1 percent of the world’s fresh water is readily accessible for direct human use.

Through the partnership, GlobalGiving generated a pool of challenge submissions by crowdsourcing ideas from their 800 project leaders representing 80 countries. Most of the pressing issues that met the selection criteria were water-related; GlobalGiving selected four final Challenges to move forward into the post phase with Innocentive.

“The GlobalGiveback Innovation Challenge lets our network of grassroots project leaders get the help of experts globally who can provide innovative solutions to the clean water and hydropower challenges they face in their local communities,” said Mari Kuraishi, president and co-founder of GlobalGiving. “These solutions will improve the lives of people in India, Uganda, Bolivia, and Peru.”

With support from the Rockefeller Foundation, the GlobalGiveback Innovation Challenge Set offers Solvers cash rewards of up to $40,000 USD for winning solutions. After GlobalGiving selects solution winners for each of the Challenges, it will then use open innovation and crowdsourcing to raise funds to implement the winning designs or methods.

“The Rockefeller Foundation is proud to continue our partnership with Innocentive and GlobalGiving as we give non-profits access to the cutting-edge innovation often reserved for corporate America,” said Dr. Judith Rodin, president of the Rockefeller Foundation. “As we enter into the second decade of the 21st century, we are still faced with unimaginable challenges — with the most startling and basic being that millions still lack clean and accessible water. As a result of this partnership, these organizations will now be able to tackle these fundamental issues facing the developing world by tapping into the expertise of some of the world’s brightest problem solvers.”

Engineers, technologists, entrepreneurs and creative thinkers are invited to join InnoCentive’s Solver network to help GlobalGiving’s partner project organizations solve the following GlobalGiveback Innovation Challenges:

1. Drinking Water Purification Method (Uganda’s Lake Victoria) — Design an easy-to-use method to purify water making it safe to drink. Award amount: $20,000 USD * This is InnoCentive’s 1,000th Challenge posting since inception.
2. Sunlight/UV-light Dose Indicator (Bolivia) — Create an indicator that gives a visual sign of water that has been exposed to a sufficient dose of sunlight or UV-light for disinfection. Award amount: $40,000 USD
3. Rainwater Harvesting Storage Tank (India Wetland Region in Kerala) — Design a low cost, rainwater harvesting storage tank. Award amount: $20,000 USD
4. Small-scale River Turbines (Peruvian Jungle) — Design a river turbine to generate power to electrify Peruvian villages, schools and medical centers. Award amount: $20,000 USD

“This initiative expands the reach and impact of our open innovation partnership with GlobalGiving and Rockefeller,” said Dwayne Spradlin, CEO of InnoCentive. “By crowdsourcing the Challenges, we identified some of the most difficult problems facing the world. We’re confident that our Solvers will come up with innovative solutions to address these problems, and once they go into real-world implementation, will provide a better quality of life for people living in these developing countries.”

For more information on the GlobalGiveback Innovation Challenge Set including deadlines visit http://gw.innocentive.com/ar/landing/global-giveback.gsp

About GlobalGiving

GlobalGiving (www.globalgiving.org) is the leading Internet-based network for peer-to-peer philanthropy. Our mission is to sustain a high-powered marketplace for good that connects donors directly to the causes they care most about. Through GlobalGiving, individuals and corporations can maximize the impact of every dollar by efficiently and transparently directing their donations to projects here at home and around the world. Since its launch in 2002, GlobalGiving has helped thousands of donors give more than $25 million to over 1,400 projects.

About the Rockefeller Foundation

The Rockefeller Foundation works around the world to ensure that more individuals, institutions, and communities can tap into growth and opportunity while strengthening resistance to risks and challenges, affirming its founding mission to “promote the well-being” of humanity. The Foundation today supports initiatives to mobilize an agricultural revolution in sub-Saharan Africa, bolster economic security for American workers, inform more equitable, sustainable transportation policies in the United States, assure access to affordable, high-quality health systems in developing countries, and help vulnerable communities cope with the impacts of imminent climate change. For more, visit www.rockefellerfoundation.org.
 

About InnoCentive, Inc.

Since 2001, InnoCentive has helped corporate, government, and non-profit organizations to better innovate through crowdsourcing, strategic consulting services and internal Software-as-a-Service offerings. The company built the first global Web community for open innovation where organizations or “Seekers” submit complex problems or “Challenges” for resolution to a “Solver” community of more than 200,000 engineers, scientists, inventors, business professionals, and research organizations in more than 200 countries. Prizes for winning solutions are financial awards up to US $1,000,000. Committed to unleashing diverse thinking, InnoCentive continues to introduce new products and services exemplifying a new corporate model where return to investors and individual passion go hand in hand with solving mankind’s most pressing problems. https://www.innocentive.com/

Press contacts:
Karyn Martin
Emerge PR
617-729-3173
Email Contact

Teresa Wells
Rockefeller Foundation
212-852-8304
Email Contact

Joan Ochi
GlobalGiving
202-232-5784
Email Contact