Research
Lakhani’s paper "The Value of Openness in Scientific Problem Solving" is a commonly cited research paper examining the effectiveness of InnoCentive. Karim Lakhani and Lars Bo Jeppesen of Harvard Business School studied the company’s data along with two InnoCentive scientists. They analysed 166 challenges between June 2001 and January 2005 and also surveyed about 350 of its solvers. About 80,000 scientists from 150 countries reviewed those challenges, and 49 were solved, an impressive rate according to Lakhani given that most of the problems perplexed well-funded research and development companies.
The biggest and most surprising finding was that the further the focal problem was from the solvers’ field of expertise, the more likely they were to solve it. Furthermore, there was a 10% increase in the probability of being a winning solver if the problem was assessed to be completely outside their field of expertise. For example, a firm’s research and development laboratory did not understand the toxicological significance of a particular pathology and had consulted the top toxicologists without success. They broadcasted their problem via InnoCentive and it was solved by a scientist with a PhD in protein crystallography using methods common in her field. She had not been exposed to toxicology problems before.
Other significant findings were discovered with respect to what motivated the members to use the website. Intrinsic motivations like enjoying problem solving and cracking a tough problem were found to motivate participants more than extrinsic motivations such as desire to win reward money. Also, having free time to actually participate in the problem solving effort significantly correlated with being a winning solver.
Read more about this topic: Inno Centive
Famous quotes containing the word research:
“Our science has become terrible, our research dangerous, our findings deadly. We physicists have to make peace with reality. Reality is not as strong as we are. We will ruin reality.”
—Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)
“It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast. It keeps him young.”
—Konrad Lorenz (1903–1989)
“The research on gender and morality shows that women and men looked at the world through very different moral frameworks. Men tend to think in terms of “justice” or absolute “right and wrong,” while women define morality through the filter of how relationships will be affected. Given these basic differences, why would men and women suddenly agree about disciplining children?”
—Ron Taffel (20th century)