02.27.06
Whether a researcher is in need of an innovative solution or has the answer to a difficult problem related to household and personal product chemistry, check out www.innocentive.com <http://www.innocentive.com> . Company founders call it the first online forum that allows world-class scientists and science-based companies to collaborate in a global scientific community to achieve innovative solutions to complex challenges.
Since its inception in mid-2001, InnoCentive has developed a roster of 85,000 problem-solving scientists from around the world who have worked on hundreds of complex problems related to chemistry, biology and material sciences. The researcher who finds a solution for a “seeker company” can reaps financial rewards that can be as high as $100,000, according to InnoCentive.
And just how successful is this cadre of online experts? Procter & Gamble, a long standing InnoCentive customer, has noted, in a recent Harvard Business Review article that 1/3 of the problems they’ve posted have been solved.
“That’s inline with our expectations, insisted Mr. Castro. “If we were constantly successful, it would prove that we’re not pushing the envelope when it comes to solving difficult problems.”
The InnoCentive business model dovetails with the growing trend among corporations to search beyond their corporate walls for solutions to complex problems. InnoCentive’s list of seeker clients includes Procter & Gamble, Henkel, Ciba and Dow Chemical.
“For household and personal product companies, we can provide spot capacity for R&D with minimal transaction costs and time, we offer risk management for the most risk-intensive operation of the business (R&D), and our large solver population can generate a wide diversity of ideas and approaches, often originating from outside the normal fields of inquiry”, concluded Mr. Castro.
Since its inception in mid-2001, InnoCentive has developed a roster of 85,000 problem-solving scientists from around the world who have worked on hundreds of complex problems related to chemistry, biology and material sciences. The researcher who finds a solution for a “seeker company” can reaps financial rewards that can be as high as $100,000, according to InnoCentive.
And just how successful is this cadre of online experts? Procter & Gamble, a long standing InnoCentive customer, has noted, in a recent Harvard Business Review article that 1/3 of the problems they’ve posted have been solved.
“That’s inline with our expectations, insisted Mr. Castro. “If we were constantly successful, it would prove that we’re not pushing the envelope when it comes to solving difficult problems.”
The InnoCentive business model dovetails with the growing trend among corporations to search beyond their corporate walls for solutions to complex problems. InnoCentive’s list of seeker clients includes Procter & Gamble, Henkel, Ciba and Dow Chemical.
“For household and personal product companies, we can provide spot capacity for R&D with minimal transaction costs and time, we offer risk management for the most risk-intensive operation of the business (R&D), and our large solver population can generate a wide diversity of ideas and approaches, often originating from outside the normal fields of inquiry”, concluded Mr. Castro.