Ang Peregrino Recommends 15: InnoCentive.Com

InnoCentive.Com
URL: http://innocentive.com/

Innocentive is about giving incentive to innovation. This is the website where the toughest problems meet the brightest minds. Where people are asked to solve the problems no one else has been able to solve.

And that is just so cool.

There are two types of market in Innocentive.com: the SEEKERS are the organizations with challenging problems, and the SOLVERS are the smart people with creative solutions.

This is one real and successful case of crowdsourcing. Many big corporations and non-profit organizations have come up with innovative products through Innocentive.

It all begins with a CHALLENGE. Challenging problems needing practical solutions are put out in the website for innovative minds to start thinking about. InnoCentive Solvers work across four different stages of the product development process - 1) ideation (or brainstorming the Big Idea), 2) design, 3) product prototype and 4) delivery of final product. Procter and Gamble uses the network for this very purpose.

Innocentive is also helping the developing world: there was a call for a solar-powered lamp/flashlight hybrid to bring much-needed light to villages in Africa and other remote areas of the world. Russell McMahon, an electrical engineer from New Zealand, solved the first Challenge and was awarded $20,000. The flashlight/lamp hybrid is designed to work for up to 20 years without breaking. Russel was gracious enough to send me the weblink to his product. Click here to know more about BoGo LIGHT.

The second Challenge asked for a cost-effective food grinder that could easily grind both wet and dry spices, thus providing a more efficient food preparation tool for impoverished sectors of India. Previously people used Pin Pulverizer machines to grind dry grains into fine powders. However, these machines would clog and break when used to grind spices such as chili or coriander because of their higher moisture content. Tom Kruer, a Kentucky-based (USA) product design engineer and entrepreneur, solved the second Challenge by developing an easily-interchangeable blade that converts the current dry-spice grinder into a multi-functional machine. By removing the current dry-blade, and replacing it with the new one, the grinder can be converted within minutes from a dry-grinder to a moist-grinder.

For its continuing quest to solve the world’s innovation challenges, and for being the link between the Seekers and Solvers of this world, Innocentive.Com is what AngPeregrino recommends this week.

Founded in 2001, InnoCentive built the first global web community for open innovation, enabling scientists, engineers, professionals and entrepreneurs to collaborate to deliver breakthrough solutions for R&D-driven organizations. InnoCentive Seekers, who collectively spend billions of dollars on R&D, submit complex problems to the InnoCentive Marketplace where more than 140,000 engineers, scientists, inventors, business people, and research organizations in more than 175 countries are invited to solve them. Solvers who deliver the most innovative solutions receive financial awards ranging up to US$1,000,000. InnoCentive’s Seekers include commercial, government and non-profit organizations such as Eli Lilly and Company, Janssen, Solvay, GlobalGiving and The Rockefeller Foundation.

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