InnoCentive,Inc., the provider of a global open innovation marketplace, and scientific publisher Nature Publishing Group (NPG), UK, have announced the launch of the nature.com Open Innovation Pavilion. Jointly hosted on InnoCentive.com and nature.com, the website seeks to provide a hub for scientific collaboration and open innovation.
Companies and not-for-profit organisations (known as 'Seekers') can post 'Challenges' in life sciences, physical sciences and clinical medicine on the nature.com Open Innovation Pavilion. These 'Challenges' are briefs that allow Seekers to tap into external expertise to solve research problems or drive development of new products and technologies. Successful Solvers receive financial rewards. Seekers can call on the expertise from nature.com's five million monthly visitors and InnoCentive's community of more than 175,000 Solvers.
The nature.com Open Innovation Pavilion provides the nature.com user community and InnoCentive's Solver community with a set of challenges to tackle, specifically tailored to their interests and expertise. InnoCentive and NPG will work together to maximise the visibility of these challenges to nature.com users, readers of NPG journals, and current InnoCentive Solvers. Nature.com users will be invited to become InnoCentive Solvers; a larger pool of expertise is seen to increase the chances of solving issues of worldwide concern. Current InnoCentive clients will have the opportunity to post challenges in the nature.com Pavilion, taking advantage of this new larger community of Solvers.
There are already five Challenges at the nature.com Open Innovation Pavilion, with a cumulative award amount of $125,000. The Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi) will be one of the first Seekers to post a Challenge. Other Challenges include finding efficient chromosome doubling method in plants, new end uses for cotton, and experimental ways to avoid condensation in highly charged, crosslinked hydrogels.
InnoCentive claims to have built the first global web community for open innovation, enabling scientists, engineers, professionals and entrepreneurs across the world to deliver solutions for innovative research and development companies. InnoCentive's Solver community numbers more than 175,000 from 175 countries. The partnership with NPG is projected to further expand this Solver base.
NPG and InnoCentive had first announced a partnership in March 2009.
