Innocentive built the first global Web community for open innovation where organizations or “Seekers” submit complex problems or “Challenges” for resolution to a “Solver” community of more than 200,000 engineers, scientists, inventors, business professionals, and research organizations in more than 200 countries. Innocentive’s CEO Dwayne Spradlin called ScienceForCitizens.net (and our sister site, ScienceCheerleader.com) “close cousins” of Innocentive in our shared faith in collaborative research. We knew our audiences were similar in many ways: you’re engaged, you want to improve the world–or your own corner of the world–you’re creative, and you’re not afraid to try something new. So, Innocentive posted one of its challenges on ScienceForCitizens.net to measure responses. It turns out the conversion rate (number of people who linked from Sci4Cits to Innocentive’s challenge and proceeded to submit ideas to solve the challenge) was VERY high. I hope one of you will win the prize money offered for that particular challenge!
Yesterday, Innocentive posted another challenge on Sci4Cits: $5K to the solver who comes up with a new idea for an “open and re-closable fastening system which will be effective and easy to use on a clothing product. The Seeker is looking for something other than the obvious common fasteners such as buttons, zippers, Velcro, sticky tabs and hook and loop closures.” Good luck!
Recently, Sci4Cits cofounder, Michael Gold, was interviewed for Innocentive’s website, reaching more than 200,000 solvers. Check out the interview! Michael explains how and why we launched this site and where we’d like to take it from here.
Thanks for joining us on this journey!