InnoCentive launches nonprofit unit: Crowdsourcing solutions for the world's problems

Now this is a good idea: Innocentive, one of the major examples of crowdsourcing innovation using the principles of "interactive value creation", today announced that it has teamed-up with The Rockefeller Foundation to launch a "nonprofit" application of its distributed innovation tool.

InnoCentive should be known to most readers of my blog, even if I never reported extensively about them (as they are not based on the input of customers or users): In brief: Innocentive is a company based here in the neighborhood of MIT that specializes in matching scientists with corporate clients to solve research and development problems.

It has been shown that this "broadcasting" of problems instead of seeking for a problem internally is a highly efficient mechanism. So using it not only for commercial firms, but to generate science and technology solutions to pressing development problems, is a great idea.

The non-profit Rockefeller Foundation area on InnoCentive's scientific platform will bring to bear the talent of thousands of world-class scientists, innovators and entrepreneurs in solving the most pressing and complex humanitarian challenges posed by non-profit entities selected by the Foundation.

Under the agreement announced today, The Rockefeller Foundation will select non-profit entities and others with charitable intent eligible to use the InnoCentive platform under preferred conditions, and will pay access, posting and service fees on their behalf to InnoCentive, as well as challenge awards to those researchers solving the technology problems the non-profits pose. The Foundation will launch a new area on its own Web site, www.rockfound.org, to recruit and screen organizations seeking this subsidy to use the InnoCentive platform.

The new agreement is the first step in a larger Rockefeller Foundation initiative aimed at promoting innovation in a manner that spurs development, and that specifically increases access to proven innovation models for work on behalf of poor or vulnerable populations around the world. In some cases, the initiative will also help to advance access to, or distribution of, specific innovations that can be of important benefit to poor or vulnerable people.

The foundation will screen the problem seeker and pay for that company to register on the Web site. If a problem solver is matched with the seeker, Peter Costiglio, director of communications for foundation said. The foundation would then fund the award for the problem that's solved, provided that it is solved satisfactorily.

"It is difficult for us to give a specific dollar amount in terms of what type of funding we're talking about," said Peter Costiglio. "What we want to do is have problem seekers matched with problem solvers. This is a platform to enable that to happen."

I think this is a very promising new approach for solving social problems. It has been shown that many solvers at Innocentive are motivated by the spirit of solving the problem as much as by the cash reward. Working on a social problem may spur this behavior. This seems a much better model to find answers for fields where commercial solutions will not come up easily (as the market potential is too small, as, e.g., in the field of Malaria treatment) then the usual direct funding structure.

Comments

[Anonymous]

While it would be great if Innocentive's solver base was diverse enough to handle all of the types of problems a typical rockefeller grantee would want to pose, the range of the Innocentive platform is currently limited primarily to science and tech problems. Hopefully as more people become aware of the platform and both RF and Innocentive market the platform for development type problems, the solver base will become more diverse and perhaps one day be able to tackle engineering, distribution, and even policy challenges.