Entrepreneurs: Be an Innovation Bounty Hunter
by Miki Saxon
Are you curious? Are you creative? Do you jerryrig (innovate) solutions to your own problems? Are you into contests?
If your head’s been going up and down, or even if it hasn’t, do I have a deal for you.
Not me, actually, but dozens of companies in a multitude of fields are looking for you.
They are looking for you and others like you to solve their problems, but they aren’t looking for experts.
According to Karim Lakhani, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School, “The further the problem from the solver’s expertise, the more likely they are to solve it.”
30% of the unsolved problems of science-driven companies posted on InnoCentive were solved by its non-expert network.
InnoCentive posts both the problem and the reward for solving it.
Interested in health?
“Another model combines smaller prizes for promising ideas with big prizes for success. The Gates Foundation’s Grand Challenges Explorations initiative, for example, gives out $100,000 grants for interesting but unusual ideas for solving health problems the foundation sets out: like finding cellphone-based ways to increase vaccination rates, or creating the next generation of sanitation technologies. Entrants need only submit a two-page write-up of an idea. The money finances research, and if a project succeeds, it can win a prize of up to $1 million. Since 2008, the foundation has awarded prizes to 602 researchers in 44 countries.”
You just need to describe your idea—having the skills to make it happen has nothing to do with conceptualizing it.
So click here and start putting your creativity to work now!
Flickr image credit: cambodia4kidsorg
