Open innovation marketplaces
Many companies work to position themselves as the interface between companies seeking solutions and smart people – or companies – who can help deliver the solutions.
I did some research and came up with the below companies that you should look into if you want to know more about open innovation marketplaces.
Founded in 2001, InnoCentive connects companies, academic institutions, public sector and non-profit organizations, all hungry for breakthrough innovation, with a global network of more than 160,000 of the world’s brightest minds.
Innocentive is the largest open innovation platform, and they have especially been successful within pharma. They are now working to enter other industries and they have recently closed an important deal with SAP.
- Crowdsourcing Innovation: Q&A with Dwayne Spradlin of InnoCentive by FastCompany
- SAP teams up with InnoCentive; Software IP Questions Abound by ZDNet
- If You Have a Problem, ask Everyone by New York Times
- InnoCentive.com – article in Harvard Business Online
NineSigma was founded in 2000 and their core mission is to work on behalf of clients to source innovative ideas, technologies, products and services from outside their organization quickly and effectively by connecting them with the best innovators from around the world.
- NineSigma: Nurturing “Open” Innovation by BusinessWeek
Founded in 1999, yet2.com is focused on bringing buyers and sellers of technologies together so that all parties maximize the return on their investments. Yet2.com focuses on later stage technologies – not ideas.
Yet2.com maintains the technologies part of P&G Connect & Develop (http://pg.t2h.yet2.com/t2h/page/searchhome) as well as similar programs at DuPont and Honeywell.
- Technology’s Clearinghouse: Yet2.com by Forbes
TopCoder is the world’s largest competitive software development community with over 175,000 developers representing more than 200 countries. The TopCoder community builds software for a wide-ranging client base through a competitive, rigorous, standards-based methodology. This methodology results in a highly consistent set of software components allowing a software-as-parts approach to application development. TopCoder makes this large library of software components built through competition available to all of our clients.
- TopCoder: Breaking the Development Cost Rules by ZDNet
- TopCoder Eying SMB Market by PCWorld
YourEncore helps companies accelerate innovation by connecting them with retired scientists and engineers to leverage their expertise within life sciences, consumer sciences, food sciences, specialty materials, and aerospace and defense industries.
YourEncore has been in operation since 2003 and they had Procter & Gamble and Eli Lilly as initial founding client companies. YourEncore was created to tap into an under-utilized asset: the growing number of retired and veteran scientists.
- YourEncore Expands With Alliance Mangement by AllBusiness
This web-based community work on innovation challenges sponsored by organizations which want to increase their innovation capacity beyond their internal research and development teams in order to discover and develop their next important innovation.
Fellowforce.com is an open platform in all business areas such as business & strategy, marketing, innovation management, design, engineering, IT, and Supply chain. The goal is to be like InnoCentive but with a strong focus on SME´s.
More on open innovation marketplaces
We can expect many startups such as Beequu and MillionBrains to enter the race. It will be tough for them to catch up with the market-leaders but they might find a niche and develop from there.
You should also pay attention to LinkedIn. It is becoming more than just online profiles as they have developed a decent group function that can help people share knowledge. LinkedIn is continuously developing and it will be interesting to follow them.
Vertical*i might also be relevant. This company has developed an application suite that helps companies manage their most critical innovation management processes and effectively leverage their innovation network. This also includes the management of the deal flow of in- and out licensing opportunities of large organizations.
Let me know if you have more info to add about these companies – and if you know of others that are active within open innovation marketplaces.
IdeaConnection is an innovation portal that should be considered in this mix. As well as providing a platform for all types of innovation information – new inventions, interviews, technology transfer, books, videos, blogs, newsletters, etc. – they also are developing an encyclopedia of Solutions for the Common Good. This information bank is a permanent listing of Problems and Solutions that is being developed via crowdsourcing.
Open innovation is performed on their proprietary online ThinkSpace, where companies can access thousands of innovators who will work collaboratively in the ThinkSpace to solve corporate and business problems in almost any field. Companies can name a price to have their problem solved, and a team of Solvers, working with a facilitator, will provide solutions. Companies only pay for solutions they accept.
The ThinkSpace is also available at no charge to individuals who want to use their own team of solvers, and to people wanting to use the software to work on Common Good problems.
Nice overview Stefan! But another marketplace Ventika (www.ventika.com) is missing… Ventika is an open innovation network where international designers and engineers can share ideas and collaborate with each other. Companies are given the opportunity to source design & engineering questions to the Ventika Network (crowdsourcing concept).
We are unique because of using a social network application and focusing on design & engineering questions.