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Who Needs R&D -- Just E-mail Mr. Fix-It
April 24, 2007
The Globe and Mail -- ReportonBusiness.com (Canada)
By Mary Gooderham--Special to
Summary/excerpts
A report on the growing attempt to use the Internet as a spur to innovation noted that philanthropies as well as private sector businesses are actively involed in this 'open innovation' process. The coverage was part of today's Globe and Mail business section, ReportonBusiness.com.
Following are some excerpts from the article:
InnoCentive, started in 2001, focused first on the field of analytical chemistry, expanded into genetics, biochemistry and materials science and now promises to move into fields ranging from information technology to international development.
'Seekers' such as Procter & Gamble, Boeing, Pittsburgh Plate & Glass and the Rockefeller Foundation pay annual fees for access to InnoCentive's ad-hoc network of scientists in 125 countries. Some 120,000 of these 'solvers' have registered on the site...a vast range of products and processes have come from the 'open innovation' made possible on the site.
InnoCentive head Dwayne Spradlin expects that the types of challenges and amounts of awards will be elevated in the months to come -- for example, those underwritten by research foundations and philanthropists...
Prizes work in ways that conventional research doesn't, and they expand the range of those who might attempt solutions. For example, a Harvard University study showed that the more removed an InnoCentive problem was from a 'solver's' area of expertise, the more likely he or she was to crack it. With many scientific conundrums, out-of-the-box thinking and diversity of knowledge win over specialization...
InnoCentive plans new models of innovation, such as incentive programs within companies to spark internal knowledge-sharing and collaboration tools and groupings on the website that allow 'solvers' to work together.
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