labor open innovation r & d innovation management product development founded indianapolis indiana 2001 headquarters waltham massachusetts us key people craig jones chairman of the board and chief executive officer alpheus bingham founder and board of directors member products innovation management inducement prize contest crowdsourcing open innovation website innocentive.com http www.innocentive.com innocentive is a waltham massachusetts based crowdsourcing company that accepts by commission research and development problems in engineering computer science math chemistry life sciences physical sciences and business . the company frames these as challenge problems for anyone to solve . it gives cash awards for the best solutions to solvers who meet the challenge criteria . 1 contents 1 history 2 company 3 user base 4 see also 5 references 6 external links history edit the idea for innocentive came to alpheus bingham and aaron schacht in 1998 while they worked together at eli lilly and company during a session that was focused on exploring application of the internet to business . the company was launched in 2001 by jill panetta jeff hensley darren carroll and alpheus bingham with majority seed funding from eli lilly and company . darren carroll led the launch effort and became the first ceo . in 2005 innocentive was spun out of eli lilly with investments led by spencer trask of new york . in december 2006 shortly after dwayne spradlin took the helm as ceo the company signed an agreement with the rockefeller foundation to add a non profit area designed to generate science and technology solutions to pressing problems in the developing world . between 2006 and 2009 the rockefeller foundation posted 10 challenges on innocentive with an 80 % success rate . 2 in february 2012 innocentive acquired uk based omnicompete . 3 company edit innocentive is a privately held venture backed firm headquartered near boston in waltham massachusetts with a european office in london uk . the company posts challenges to its global solver community in addition to internal challenges those targeted at private communities like employees customers and suppliers . innocentive s solver community consists of over 355 000 people from nearly 200 countries 4 user base edit as of january 2014 there was a total of 355 000 users from nearly 200 countries . aside from traditional science phds the user group includes technicians students and engineers . more than 50 % of registered solvers come from russia india and china . most of the problem solvers are well educated with a majority 65.8 % holding a phd . innocentive has also signed agreements with the chinese and russian national science academies . as motivation for russian universities for example a solver s academic department can get 10 % of any award . 5 see also edit list of crowdsourcing projects references edit prizes for solutions to problems play valuable role in innovation wall street journal 25 january 2007 . retrieved 12 march 2007 . accelerating innovation for development the rockefeller foundation and inno centive renew partnership linking nonprofit organizations to world class scientific thinkers . rockefeller foundation . 23 june 2009 . retrieved 29 september 2014 . innocentive acquires omnicompete limited . innocentive . 6 february 2012 . lehrer jonah 2012 . imagine how creativity works . boston new york houghton mifflin harcourt . p. 120 . isbn 978 0 547 38607 2 . travis john 28 march 2008 . science and commerce science by the masses . science . 319 5871 1750 1752 . doi 10.1126 science .319.5871.1750 . pmid 18369115 . external links edit innocentive home page retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title innocentive & oldid 741627276 categories crowdsourcingsocial information processingopen innovation intermediariescompanies based in massachusetts navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version languages espa olitaliano edit links this page was last modified on 28 september 2016 at 18 11 . text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike license ; additional terms may apply . by using this site you agree to the terms of use and privacy policy . wikipedia is a registered trademark of the wikimedia foundation inc. a non profit organization . privacy policy about wikipedia disclaimers contact wikipedia developers cookie statement mobile view