WALTHAM, MA – InnoCentive is looking to bridge the gap between those who have new ideas for the healthcare marketplace and those who need them.

The Waltham, Mass.-based company operates an online forum in which InnoCentive “seekers,” who are basically R&D-driven organizations, are connected with InnoCentive “solvers,” a network of hundreds of thousands of engineers, scientists, inventors, businesspeople and research organizations who just might have the solution to a seeker’s problem. Problems are presented as “challenges” in the “marketplace,” and solvers whose solutions are selected receive financial awards of up to $1 million.

“Our claim to fame is really crowd-sourcing,” said Dwayne Spradlin, InnoCentive’s president and CEO. “The idea is that you don’t ask one person to solve your problem – you ask everyone.”

Founded by the pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly in 2001, InnoCentive has developed into an independent organization serving many industries, including chemistry, engineering and design, food science and business. Spradlin says the company has dealt with medical device and drug makers in the past, and is “in the early discussion phase” with healthcare systems.

“We find ourselves thinking that this can have an incredible impact,” he said.

InnoCentive helps guide the seeker, offering advice on the problem to be solved (“The last thing we want to do is put a challenge up that has a 5 percent chance of being solved,” Spradlin says) and suggesting an award range. It’s up to the seeker, though, to determine if the problem is solved and award the prize; in some cases, that award might be split among different solvers.

Examples of recent InnoCentive success stories include awards of $20,000 to solvers based in China and India for methods for accelerating and simplifying the manufacturing process for a promising new Tuberculosis (TB) drug candidate, PA-824, as sought by the non-profit Global Alliance for TB Drug Development. The winning solvers proposed a process by which the synthetic route to produce PA-824 could be reduced from five steps to three steps.

Other awards include $20,000 for a new process in dealing with oil spills, as sought by the Oil Spill Recovery Institute, and $20,000 to an electrical engineer from New Zealand who answered SunNight Solar’s call to create a dual purpose solar light to serve as a lamp and flashlight in Third World countries.

According to company officials, to date InnoCentive has received 11,872 solution submissions to 800 posted challenges and handed out 348 awards, totaling $3.7 million (of $19.25 million in available award money).
“The whole point of crowd-sourcing is you’re looking for people who think differently,” Spradlin said.