INNOCENTIVE

"We believe in the power of open innovation, bringing together creative minds to create breakthrough solutions that touch every human life. " Innocentive website

Here is the value of Innocentive, an e-business company launched in 2001 by Jill Panetta and Alpheus Bingham.
In December 2006 the company signed an agreement with the Rockefeller Foundation to add a non-profit area designed to generate science and technology solutions to pressing problems in the developing world.

InnoCentive links experts (The Solvers) to unsolved R&D problems, allowing these companies (The Seekers) to tap the talents of a global, scientific community and to the researchers to win prizes. With some 125,000 scientists from 175 countries registered, the company now provides on-demand solutions for major companies.

The research sectors are: Computer Science, Math, Chemistry, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Business, Business and entrepreneurship,Chemistry,Engineering & design Life sciences.

The main advantage for the customers of Innocentive, which are most of the time big companies, is to reduce their R&D costs of a huge amount (Customer group served). The prizes are between 10.000 and 100.000 dollars, and this does represent a huge amount of money when comparing with annual R&D budgets of some companies like Procter&Gamble. (Prize 4 Life offers 1.000.000 dollars)

Ed Melcarek, for example, a 57 years old scientist, won 25.000 dollars helping the R&D of Colgate-Palmolive to find a solution to inject fluorized powder in a toothpaste tube. In this case the supplier is an individual, part of the "croud" member of Innocentive's solvers. For them is an relative easy way to earn money, by making reasearchs on their favorite subjects.

The owner of the business has just to managed properly his internet site, to facilitate the encounter of the solver and the seeker.

Innocentive earns money each time a challenge is posted, as the seeker pays a deposit around $2000.

Competitors:
NineSigma, Yet2.com, and YourEncore.

The model could hardly be applied offline, as internet assures the easiest way to make a contact between seekers and solvers, which have to be sorted out from millions of people.

The model is sustainable for the moment, as long as R&D costs are still very high for the companies. But with the time companies will rethink their R&D departments, and invest more in innovation through new networks, and progressively, each mayor company could have its own Innocentive-like network and prizing system. Innocentive could than become a rank 2 company, trying to fit together networks of seekers with networks of solvers.

If I had to run the business of innocentive, I would prepare this natural scale evolution, and I would begin to work with social networks, like facebook or Myspace, to find communities of solver, which would be able to solve even more difficult problems in less time and for less money.
On the other side I would propose my services to companies to reorganize their R&D department in an innovative and networking way, trying to reduce their costs and increase their efficiency.

The companies mostly interested by Innocentive are in the sector of Chemistry, Biology and Bioindustry.