InnoCentive
| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Open innovation, R&D, product development |
| Founded | Indianapolis, Indiana, USA (2001) |
| Headquarters | Waltham, Massachusetts, USA |
| Key people | Dwayne Spradlin, president and CEO Robert Kinney, CFO and vice president of operations |
| Products | Open innovation, crowdsourcing, research services |
| Website | www.innocentive.com |
InnoCentive is an "open innovation" company that takes research and development problems in a broad range of domains such as engineering, computer science, math, chemistry, life sciences, physical sciences and business and frames them as "challenge problems" for anyone to solve them. It gives cash awards for the best solutions to solvers who meet the challenge criteria.[1]
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[edit] History
The idea for InnoCentive came to Alpheus Bingham and Aaron Schacht in 1998 while they worked together at Eli Lilly and Company. They brainstormed the idea for Innocentive (what they originally dubbed "Bounty Chem") during a session that was focused on exploring application of the Internet to business. The company was launched in 2001 by Jill Panetta, Jeff Hensley, Darren Carroll and Alpheus Bingham, with majority seed funding from Eli Lilly and Company. Darren Carroll led the launch effort and became the first CEO.
In 2005, InnoCentive was spun out of Eli Lilly with investments led by Spencer Trask of New York. In December 2006, shortly after current president and CEO Dwayne Spradlin took the helm, the company signed an agreement with the Rockefeller Foundation to add a nonprofit area designed to generate science and technology solutions to pressing problems in the developing world.
In 2006, Prize4Life partnered with InnoCentive to launch the $1 million ALS Biomarker Prize, which was a Grand Challenge designed to find a biomarker to measure the progression of ALS – also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease – in patients. In February 2011, the $1 million prize was awarded to Dr. Seward Rutkove for his creation and validation of a clinically viable biomarker. In early 2011, InnoCentive launched four more Grand Challenges on behalf of Life Technologies.
[edit] Company
Today, InnoCentive is a privately-held, venture-backed firm. Based near Boston, Massachusetts, the company has posted more than 1,300 Challenges to its Global Solver Community, in addition to hundreds of internal Challenges – those targeted at private communities such as employees – executed by customers. InnoCentive currently enables Challenges in a wide variety of disciplines, including Business and Entrepreneurship, Chemistry, Computer/Information Technology, Engineering and Design, Food and Agriculture, Life Sciences, Math and Statistics, and Physical Sciences.
InnoCentive’s Solver community now consists of nearly a quarter-million individuals from more than 200 countries[citation needed], with an added reach of 12+ million through strategic partnerships with organizations including The Economist, Nature Publishing Group, and Popular Science.[citation needed]
InnoCentive's customers include commercial, government and non-profit organizations, from Procter & Gamble, Dow AgroSciences and Eli Lilly and Company to the Air Force Research Lab, NASA and the Rockefeller Foundation. More than 1300 "challenges" have been posted in 40 disciplines, including chemistry, life sciences, business and entrepreneurship, computer science and clean technology.
Solutions have come from United States, Europe, Russia, China, India and Argentina; the cash awards for solving challenge problems are typically in the $10,000 to $100,000 range. To date, over $28 million has been awarded to solvers.[2]
InnoCentive provides a consultancy service to give its clients the highest likelihood of finding solutions to their problems. Client Services professionals help clients identify a challenge appropriate for posting on its network. They then estimate an appropriate award fee by determining the complexity of the problem, the resources required to find a solution, and the value transferred to the company. InnoCentive reserves the right to reject the award amounts that are deemed too low and its experts provide a solution vetting service to screen out ideas that do not meet the challenge criteria.
InnoCentive's "Seeker" companies must agree to intellectual property audits so that once a solution is provided to the company it can guarantee that the intellectual property is not used if the company decides not to award it.
InnoCentive also provides a consultancy service to its network of "solvers". Its team of PhDs provide feedback to the solvers to explain the terms of the challenges as well as why submitted solutions may be deficient. It provides the logistic and legal framework for maintaining control over the intellectual property until its sale to the seeker company. All communication and submitted solutions remain confidential.
[edit] Concept Model
For companies that heavily rely on R&D to compete on their markets (highly vertical models), resources tend to be very expensive and limited. Open Innovation suggests that valuable ideas come from both inside and outside of companies (Chesbrough, 2006). And it is also assumed that useful knowledge is widely distributed in markets and around the world. In this sense, InnoCentive has been creating and capturing value to the "seekers" and "solvers" by enabling the exchange of monetary rewards for external expertise.
[edit] References
- ^ "Prizes for Solutions to Problems Play Valuable Role in Innovation" Wall Street Journal, 25 January 2007. Retrieved 12 March 2007.
- ^ InnoCentive Secures $6.5 Million in Series B Funding From Spencer Trask Ventures, Inc.
