The Rise of PhilanthroSourcing (Part 2 of 3)

Part Two of PhilanthroMedia's examination of a new trend we call "philanthrosourcing", provides some examples. If you missed the introduction, you can go back and re-read it here.

Part Two

Most of the media hoopla around philanthrosourcing has focused on contests that offer cash to innovators who might not otherwise focus their expertise explicitly to society’s benefit.

“Grand Challenges in Global Health,” sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation since 2003, was one of the first attempts to philanthrosource new remedies for maladies that disproportionately affect the world’s poor. Challenges addressed in Round One include new ways to prevent or cure HIV, new ways of preventing infectious diseases and new drugs and delivery systems to limit the emergence of resistance.

Round One attracted more than 1,500 responses involving nearly 10,000 scientists from 75 countries. Topics for Round Two will be announced this month.

The X Prize Foundation is pursuing “revolution through competition” with multi-million dollar prizes that include the race to design, build and bring to market a car that gets 100 mpg. In 2004, a team led by aerospace engineer Burt Ratan collected $10 million from the Ansari X Prize for inventing a private passenger spaceship able to fly nearly 70 miles up and back. The Foundation expects to offer an additional 12 prizes, each worth $20 million or more, in the next seven years.

According to Sara Evans, vice president of communications for the X Prize Foundation, “What makes an X Prize an X Prize is the money -- $10 million is the floor. It’s just enough to cut through the clutter of other prizes and yet it’s not Herculean to raise. Our donors follow the prize closely and are personally interested in the areas we are exploring.”

Why Should Fortune 500 Companies Have all the Great R & D?

While the X Prize may be offering the biggest prizes, through its partnership with InnoCentive, The Rockefeller Foundation has its sights set on providing change agents access to the same opportunities for innovation as Fortune 500 companies.

Founded in 2001, InnoCentive is an open innovation web site where corporations, government agencies and non-profits can go to post Challenges they are having for the public to solve. According to the Rockefeller Foundation’s website, here’s how the process works:

* To be approved as a “seeker,” the organization describes its objectives to the Rockefeller Foundation

* Once approved, the “seeker” organization works with InnoCentive to post its challenges on InnoCentive’s website and to post an appropriate monetary award

* InnoCentive’s registered “solvers” submit solutions, with the winning “solver” collecting the award

* The “seeker” only pays the award if the problem is solved successfully

* Once the award is made, the “solver” transfers the solution to the “seeker”

Seven of the nine challenges currently listed on Rockefeller’s portal within the InnoCentive site have already been awarded. These include design for a dry-based biolatrine and a solar-powered wireless router composed of low-cost, readily available hardware and software components.

InnoCentive’s CEO, Dwayne Spradlin, is clearly a believer: “My entire life, I’ve wanted to make a difference. When I got the opportunity to run this unproven company, I found myself saying, if we could make this work, we could change the human condition by going way beyond the archaic ways that innovation has happened in the past.”

As Spradlin makes clear, this new approach is about far more than contests and prizes. Like crowdsourcing, it includes a wide array of ways to harness what James Surowiecki calls the “wisdom of crowds.” But when the end game is social gain rather than profit, unexpected benefits can accrue from listening to a broader array of voices in new and deeper ways.

Tomorrow, Part Three: What Happens When You Really Listen.

Re-read part one.

Susan Herr