#innocentive

[erainbowd]

Maybe I Should Go into Business

Reading a book about Creativity made me think maybe I should forget #theArts and go into #business. Is that where the real #creativity is?

Creativity is incredibly important to me. That’s why I read Jonah Lehrer’s book, Imagine: How Creativity Works, even though he’s been disgraced for being a little too “creative” with his Bob Dylan quotes. Before he got himself disgraced, he made all the podcast rounds so not much of the book was a particular surprise to me. I’ve heard the story of the invention of the Swiffer. I know all about…

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[pavel-nosok]

London-based idea management platform Wazoku acquires US rival and raises additional €1.4 million for global expansion

London-based idea management platform Wazoku acquires US rival and raises additional €1.4 million for global expansion

The idea management software and services firm Wazoku today announced a new funding round of €1.4 million, led by Calculus Capital and supported by other shareholders and members of the Wazoku management team. Also, Wazoku is continuing its expansion with the acquisition of US open innovation firm InnoCentive‘s assets. The financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed yet.

The idea behind…

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[pleaseconnectme-blog1]

The Rise of Crowdsourcing

Remember outsourcing? Sending jobs to India and China is so 2003. The new pool of cheap labor: everyday people using their spare cycles to create content, solve problems, even do corporate R & D.

The informative (but dated) article I was going to link to... I think it’s a bit of a must-read on crowdsourcing

[ramonvullings]

InnoCentive: How to tap into the power of the crowd Another learning from the NASA cross-industry innovation summit: InnoCentive. InnoCentive crowdsources innovation solutions from the world’s smartest people, who compete to provide ideas and solutions to important business, social, policy and scientific challenges. How to tap into the power of the crowd. Using cross-disciplenary crowd-sourced teams to solve tough challenges. 

[bguilfoyle-blog]

In a recent Ted talk Rachel Botsman makes the case that trust is the new currency of the shared economy.

Is it possible to come up with a system to objectively evaluate the trustworthiness of someone prior to engaging in a transaction in the shared economy?  An @innocentive challenge is looking for people who believe they can answer exactly that.

I believe such a system would require a social proof mechanism that can evaluate an individual across multiple social networks similar to Klout. Perhaps this could be coupled with a shared public ledger system to prove identity?

[i-mho]

The Challenge Statistics module provides feedback about participation levels in an InnoCentive Challenge and submission trends.

[johnismay]

The Sarin Sweepstakes

The post on InnoCentive struck me funny right away. 1,500 tons of chem, it had to be destroyed in situ, and the solution had to come by C-17s.

If our government is trying to figure out how to get rid of Assad's chem stockpile, it's easy to know what won't work: airstrikes. Like the ones NATO carried out in Libya that only created a giant mess, and continue to kill civilians with damaged UXO spread about. Bombing chem rounds from the air will just create a plume that'll kill lots of people.

With the post ruling out incineration and chemical neutralization as options, I thought about the only other one I knew. And that's C4.

But how many 1.25-lb M112 blocks would it take? Figuring that out was the fun part. Running the numbers, you realize it would take tens of millions of pounds of bang and it would completely tie up the US Air Force's fleet of C-17s and C-5s just to haul it all in. (taking for granted permissive air space.)

Somewhere in the Pentagon a friend of mine probably had to do the same calculations as the token EOD guy on a staff, and hand the bad news to a flag officer. It's basic pre-mission planning.

Thanks to Noah Shachtman for running The Sarin Sweepstakes on FP's blog.

[johnismay]

Who Is Crowdsourcing a Massive Chemical Weapons Disposal Problem?

This photo appears in a challenge posted by an anonymous party on Innocentive, a crowdsourcing website. Shown here are hundreds of American artillery projectiles awaiting destruction in accordance with the Chemical Weapons Convention.

Wonder who posted it? And what problem set is likely being addressed? The evidence points to one organization, and a problem that probably has some politicians and flag officers losing sleep over it. Coming soon: my first post for Foreign Policy.