Just learned of InnoCentive, cool freelance projects, not strictly programming. | Hacker News Reader

Just learned of InnoCentive, cool freelance projects, not strictly programming.

www2.innocentive.com

20 pointsnetworkjester12 comments

My wife and I submitted a proposal for an Innocentive challenge sponsored by the local science museum a while back. The task was to design the next great traveling exhibit for science museums, and we had fun writing our proposal. A few months later we received an email announcing the names of the winning teams, and that's all - no details on the winning proposals, no feedback on our submission. I understand that they can't give everyone customized feedback, but I was still left feeling like I got absolutely nothing from the experience - I have no idea what parts of my proposal needed improvement, no idea how to make my next proposal better. For a different kind of challenge (say I found a successful way to "convert lactic acid to acrylic acid" but my solution still wasn't chosen), I'd probably be angry about the lack of transparency. So yeah, that was probably the first and last time I'll try to solve one of their challenges.

All of the projects make me sigh with wonder and fill me with desire to dust off the secret biochemical lab that I have in my basement.

Don't, the 'rewards' are ridiculously low for both the effort they demand and the money you could make out of it if you actually solved these problems.

I agree that this seems to be true for some (many) of the problems, but it depends on the requirements. Some require only written proposals, some require deliverables etc. I think it's unfair to say the rewards are too low, especially when it is always up to the solvers discretion whether or not the terms are favorable.

Full disclosure: I'm not affiliated with InnoCentive, my brother just sent me the link this morning and I thought I'd share.

It does have a hint of 99designs about it - basically competing with others for a prize which is less than the minimum fee they'd expect to pay a competent contractor for time spent trying to achieve a solution.

I was actually wondering about that... there's a featured challenge on the front page: a biomarker for ALS.

The prize is 1m$... now, that is a lot of money, but something doesn't clash. I'm sure that'd come out to about the yearly salary for 10 researchers. No mention of lab costs, testing, publication, blah blah...

I'm not sure, but it smells like the typical Scriptlance (http://www.scriptlance.com/) fare, with a similar cost/reward point.

Meh. My lab will stay dusty :(

I agree about the reward / effort ratio, but it was unclear to me if that's purposeful (99 Designs) or if the intent is to spur innovation in certain areas (X Prize).

We have launched a similar website, currently in beta: http://www.zombal.com . Maybe, just maybe you can start using your secret lab in the coming months.

Looks very interesting. I'd suggest that you offer as much feedback to losing submissions as possible (see my other comment), to help losers improve and keep them interested in trying other challenges.

Zombal has a different format from Innocentive. The way it works is someone (the launcher) launches a task (usually scientific) and sets a budget or approximate payout amount. Then several people (the catchers) bid on it, they don't do any work until they are actually hired to complete the task.

Wikinomics talks about Innocentive, saying at the time there were "ninety thousand scientists from 175 countries" registered there, and that "firms will build their R&D organizations around a core of question askers and outsource most of the problem solving" Actually, I think they mention Innocentive over two dozen times in the book and how it was supposed to revolutionize the world. Meh. There is the book on Amazon if you haven't seen it: http://amzn.com/1591843677?itag=nowarlab-20&linkCode=as2

The blurb says they have "thousands" of challenges, but the actual list contains twenty-four. And who owns the winning solution? The solver, or whichever $BIGMULTINATIONAL just paid chump change for something that will earn them billions?

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