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Innocentive has a number of users who don't exist, they use those fake users and make them win contests using designs sent by other users, they don't want even to give you a little cut of the reward, so they create those fake users to get the whole reward for themselves, but fraud always contains flaws that make them get uncovered, sometimes a contest contains 4 points and you find 7 winners, each from a different team and each takes a different sum of money, I am one of thousands of people who wasted their time and effort for the good of those thieves.
The complaint has been investigated and resolved to the customer’s satisfaction.
I agree with the concepts here. Open innovation is a forum where scientists of different background and approaches present a solution of a problem to each other.
As a scientist, the feedback of the community/peers is important. I've submitted long time ago a solution to Innocentive, as likely expected I've not been selected to be a winner.
Now, my solution can be an "aha moment" for the reviewer, who being an expert in the field may have a better approach or a more generic view of the field, or it can be a waste of reviewer's time, who will say "we tried this 5 years ago". However, nothing prevents the reviewer to take all the good ideas or at least become biased of the work of the participants, while nominating his niece to be the winner of the contest. The judgement process is as opaque as deciding the best secret agent of the year.
The lack of feedback makes things like innocentive a waste of time. Same as a low level conference/journal happy to have more "material" published, without any scientific polishing.
I think the idea of Innocentive is fine, a chance to compete in solving difficult challenges. However, there are no protections for the solvers. The seekers run the show and are held to no standard with regards to data quality, objectivity or fairness. The seeker may establish rules, but then disregard violations of their own rules without consequence. Innocentive is not going to step in and enforce the rules. The only rule they care about is the golden rule, "He who has the gold makes the rules." Innocentive is paid by the seekers to get crowd sourced solutions to their problems. In what universe would they have any motivation to protect the interests of the solvers. So enter their challenges if you want, for the fun of it. But don't expect it to be fair.
I can tell you after countless submissions that they
talk a big forward-thinking game about crowd-sourcing and using the net
to find answers to industrial, medical, scientific, philanthropic needs,
but they don't "walk the walk" at all. All you ever get is "our
scientists have unfortunately not chosen your solution". They might as
well be a science magazine in the 1950's running a "mail in your ideas"
contest which they never answer. If they believe in crowd-sourcing and
were to develop a policy that reflects comprehension of the net and
crowd-sourcing they'd have figured it out by now that information needs
to go both ways. How can you improve their entries if you don't know if
you were even in the running or why you lost. They don't tell you that. I
can live with being told "you were among our top 20 solvers" or some
such. But no. And the thing is, I don't submit anything unless I would
stake my life on it that it can't fail if implemented as stated.
Sometimes you can identify a process which is an ideal that can't be
improved upon and only equalled. But you get the same useless rejection.
They tell you you're not allowed to identify yourself. Then when you
look at who won, it's always someone tailor made to make them look
good--pluralistic perfection with no details at all on what the solution
was. Is this all just a coincidence and me a buffoon who can't get
anything right for once? I know damn well that's not the case. I can see
a stacked deck when there is one. And they have had years to answer
these concerns with more equitable results--it's not the money, it's the
chance to fulfill vision and sell yourself to others if you're ideas
are sound. And they are more a wall between you and the supposed
"seekers" than a facilitator of talent trying to get a lousy toe in the
door. I just can't buy that "winner takes all" here and they dispose of
all ideas they don't award for. It can't be this secretive and be real. Screw them. I've had it.
InnoCentive is an opt-in business environment and model. You agree up front to all terms and conditions. If you don't like it, you don't participate. Hundreds of solvers, including myself, have received thousands upon thousands of dollars as rewards, mostly for IP we were doing nothing with anyway. A company usually still has to invest millions to commercialize and implement an idea after awarded, so the awards certainly seem commensurate with the front end work solvers provide. And as for the original complaint - that's the craziest conspiracy theory I ever heard.
The prizes are ridiculously low, maybe it would take a genius to solve any of these problems but a bunch of ### could understand solutions and steal them.
Companies should create with patent offices a more transparent organism than innoncentive with a governemental base to bypass this.
" What Goldman sachs does with money, innocentive does it with ideas"
INNOCENTIVE IS A CORPORATE RIP OFF AT BEST. THEY EXPECT YOU TO SYNTHESISE NOVEL COMPOUNDS IN A LABORATORY INVESTING YOUR TIME AND RESOURCES AND MONEY AND YOUR EXPERTISE AND PAY YOU PEANUTS. IMAGINE GETTING PAID 100 DOLLARS FOR MAKING A NOVEL COMPOUND AND INVESTING SEVERAL DAYS FOR THIS EFFORT.THEY USED TO HAVE LARGER 1000 DOLLAR REWARDS FOR 1 G OF EACH COMPOUND BUT NOW THEY HAVE BECOME SO CHEAP BECAUSE THEIR CLIENTS ARE FROM CHINA AND INDIA WHO WILL WORK LIKE DOGS FOR THIS LOW AMOUNT. I HAVE STOPPED DOING PROJECTS FOR THEM AS THEY EVEN REFUSED TO PAY ME FOR COMPOUNDS I MADE FOR THEM. I HAVE REPORTED INNOCENTIVE TO THE US ATTORNEY GENERAL AND A CLAS ACTION LAW SUIT WILL BE FILED SHORTLY
"open innovation" seems to be a very cheap way to steal ideas.