The World Bank estimates that nearly 2 billion people worldwide live off the grid. One man is on a mission to change that -- Mark Bent leverages the InnoCentive Innovation Marketplace, funded by grants from the Rockefeller Foundation and NY-based VC firm Spencer Trask, to find environmentally friendly, cost effective lighting solutions.
If you're not already aware of InnoCentive, well, you should be. For those who believe that Open Innovation, Crowdcasting, or Crowdsourcing are a big scam, pulling ideas "for free" out of the crowd, and providing all of the profit and benefit purely to the company who has tapped into the crowd, then there is some work we need to do to uncover a bit more of the ways that InnoCentive's model differs from others.
While you're thinking about that, you may want to listen to the interview I had done with Anil Rathi, CEO of IdeaCrossing - they have a different twist on this model as well, this time, putting the brains of MBA students to the test for Innovation Challenges issued by some very well known companies.
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