Inno GRIPS project blog

Location: Blogs InnoGRIPS Early Career Researchers Workshop – Open Innovation and IPR
Posted by: jhayden	3/24/2009 11:23 AM
The Nature Publishing Group has just announced a partnership with InnoCentive to develop on online platform for open innovation, but will this new partnership address the issues of IP rights stifling collaborative crowdsourcing? The Nature Publishing Group has just announced a partnership with InnoCentive to develop on online platform for crowdsourcing. The platform will connect seekers with solvers much as InnoCentive's website does now, only the solvers will come from Nature's readership of scientific experts.While the use of prize money to garner innovative solutions is not new, this collaboration may prove to be more fruitful than past attempts given Nature's reputation for global excellence. The press release announcing the partnership also touts the benefits of this prize model in tough economic times; "This agreement comes at a pivotal time when businesses, especially those in life sciences, are endeavoring to maintain research and development activities with reduced budgets and resources. The partnership of NPG and InnoCentive will accelerate the uptake of open innovation as a complementary business model that has particular appeal during a global economic downturn." Over the past seven years of its operation, InnoCentive's website has facilitated the awards of $3.5 million to around 300 solvers. A recent award was granted for "Design of an affordable solar powered device to prevent and/or limit the spread of malaria." Have a look at the interesting article discussing the solvers' (a father and son team) process which led to an apt solution; this kind of publicly available detailed description is rare for InnoCentive projects. In keeping with GRIPS' interest in open innovation's relationship to intellectual property rights, it is worth noting that InnoCentive's current platform ensures that solvers' solutions are only seen by itself and the seeker who proposed the problem. Most often there is a requirement that the solver transfer all IP rights to the seeker before receiving the financial reward. In this way, concern over IP rights is perhaps stifling the potential for iterative innovation or truly open innovation in that the potential for previously unaffiliated collaborators to come together to work on a problem is not facilitated, nor is the potential for piggybacking in a collaborative crowdsourcing environment. There is interesting software now in development at Pisa's Leaning Lab that addresses the IP issues which could arise from this more inclusive model. Perhaps the new Nature crowdsourcing site will incorporate somethign akin to the Leaning Lab's offering to ensure seekers get the best solutions while solvers get a chance to work across disciplines and continents to generate novel theories and innovations while ensuring thier input to a project is fairly acknowledged and rewarded.

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