The Rockefeller Foundation-InnoCentive partnership brings the benefits of this model to those working on science and technology problems faced by poor or vulnerable people. Organizations describe their technology problem through the Foundation’s online questionnaire [3] and, if accepted, have their service fees and eventually their reward offering covered by the Foundation. Accountability is built in as the “seekers” have to pay half of the reward themselves and are only reimbursed after the innovation is implemented.
The partnership is an excellent way to take advantage of InnoCentive’s network of more than 100,000 registered “solvers” – scientists representing a wide variety of disciplines – from 175 countries.This is a unique opportunity for organizations that have found effective dissemination techniques to increase and enhance the array of product offerings to their target groups. Further, it could strongly benefit social entrepreneurs that are tapped into the needs of their community but lack the scientific expertise to fully develop their ideas. It will be interesting to see how extensive the implementation has to be for Rockefeller to agree to reimburse for the second half of the reward. If organizations are forced to find a way to make a profit from the technology they are more likely to find innovative dissemination techniques and implement widely. Hopefully Rockefeller will at least be demanding about extensive implementation, if not sustainability as well.