Innovate Beyond Your Weight

Innovation is crucial for the growth and sustainability of any business large or small.  Successful small business owners tend to be natural innovators, driven by necessity, opportunity and ingenuity.  Unfortunately, small businesses generally tend to have fewer resources to dedicate to innovation.

InnoCentive is one way to stretch your innovation dollar.  Modeled as the “world’s first open innovation marketplace”, InnoCentive uses the reach of the internet to help firms seek innovative solutions to their problems.  A company can sign up as a seeker to post their challenges or problems on the InnoCentive website and offer an appropriate cash prize for the best solution.  A network of solvers will then compete to win this cash prize.

Apparently over 400 challenges have been solved since 2001 in a wide range of fields covering technology, business processes and even economic development.  Some of these solutions have been scrutinized by independent auditors and have been shown to have impressive returns on investment and payback periods.  A big advantage that the InnoCentive approach enjoys is that companies pay for practical results rather than just effort.