InnoCentive Partners with Life Technologies and Expands Its Grand Challenge Program

InnoCentive is now part of Wazoku

WALTHAM, Mass. – April 25, 2011 – InnoCentive, the global leader in Challenge Driven Innovation, today announced that it has partnered with Life Technologies for the first phase of the $7 million Life Grand Challenges. A Grand Challenge is a well-formed problem – or series of problems – whose solution has high value and far-reaching consequences in the areas of human health, public safety, education, the environment, and energy. Grand Challenges typically have a collective award of $1 million and higher.

Life Technologies’ first three Grand Challenges, each with a $1 million award, focus on doubling the scalability, speed, and accuracy of its Ion Personal Genome Machine (PGM)™. This breakthrough innovation – a printer-size instrument that can quickly sequence segments of the genome using semiconductor technology – holds the promise of democratizing the DNA sequencing market. Life Technologies’ goal for the three Grand Challenges is to produce twice as much sequence data, twice as fast, and with twice the accuracy. These Challenges are now posted in the Life Grand Challenges Pavilion on InnoCentive.com.

Based on its efforts with Life Technologies, and past successes with organizations such as the Prize4Life, which awarded $1 million to Dr. Seward Rutkove for his groundbreaking ALS biomarker discovery, InnoCentive is also announcing an expansion to its Grand Challenge Program. This program leverages InnoCentive’s proven Challenge Driven Innovation methodology to provide an end-to-end Grand Challenge solution that is uniquely configured to the specific needs of InnoCentive’s Seeker clients.

The InnoCentive Grand Challenge Program offers significant brand-enhancing opportunities which induce the public via open innovation and crowdsourcing to either address a problem that matters for the public good or solve a high-value problem that matters to any business, agency, or non-profit organization. In addition to InnoCentive’s 250,000-strong global community of creative and passionate problem Solvers, extended reach of targeted marketing efforts to millions of potential Solvers is achieved via InnoCentive’s expanding partner network which includes Environmental Defense Fund, Nature Publishing Group, Popular Science, and The Economist.

“It’s amazing to think about how far DNA sequencing has progressed over the last couple of decades and the tremendous potential that Life Technologies’ efforts can have on human health and disease,” said InnoCentive CEO Dwayne Spradlin. “The dramatic increase in interest we’re seeing for Grand Challenges has validated the passion within InnoCentive, our Seeker clients, and our Solver community due to the amazing impact that solutions to these critical Challenges can have.”

For more information about InnoCentive, visit the company’s website at www.innocentive.com.

About InnoCentive, Inc.

InnoCentive is the global leader of Challenge Driven Innovation that bridges the gap between great ideas and actual solutions to drive measureable results. Recognized as an open innovation and crowdsourcing pioneer, InnoCentive’s proven methodology, expanding global network of creative and passionate problem solvers, and Cloud-based technology platform enable organizations to tap all potential sources of innovation – employees, customers, partners, and InnoCentive’s unmatched Global Solver Community – to accelerate their pace of innovation and evolve toward becoming true Challenge Driven Enterprises. Leading commercial, public sector, and non-profit organizations such as Eli Lilly, Medtronic, NASA, Nature.com, Procter & Gamble, Roche, Rockefeller Foundation, and The Economist partner with InnoCentive to help them solve their most pressing problems and challenges. For more information, visit www.innocentive.com.