Mapping the Benefits from Innovation Contests

Overview:

An innovation contest is an effective way to address an organization’s technical needs. With its pay-for-success and winner(s)-take-all format, organizations have received novel and high-quality solutions to their problems at lower costs than solving them internally. These successes have driven researchers to focus on strategies that further enhance the resulting solutions. This narrow focus, however, might ignore benefits that are also important to these organizations. Our work leverages an in-depth case study of NASA’s highly successful 3D Printed Habitat Challenge; we analyzed how it benefited the relevant NASA subject matter experts. Our resulting framework characterizes the range, and sources, of potential benefits across different stages of an innovation contest, some of which we found to be more valuable than the solutions. These findings emphasize the need to broaden the existing focus on solutions and highlight new opportunities for practitioners to address their needs through innovation contests.

Keywords: :

• Innovation contest
• Crowdsourcing
• Open innovation
• NASA
• Additive construction

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ademir Vrolijk

Ademir Vrolijk is a PhD candidate in systems engineering at The George Washington University’s Engineering Management and Systems Engineering department. He was also a Visiting Researcher at Harvard University’s Laboratory for Innovation Science. He researches how technical organizations, such as NASA, can leverage crowdsourcing to solve complex problems. He has a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from Carleton University and is an alumnus of the International Space University’s Space Studies Program. He has worked as a project management professional in the defense and medical technology industry. He also sat on the national board of the Canadian Space Society. [email protected]

Monsi C. Roman

Monsi C. Roman has been the NASA Centennial Challenges program manager since 2015. She manages the day-to-day operations of the Agency Flagship Prizes and Competition program that currently includes seven active challenges and several challenges in formulation with a total prize purse of over $15 million. The program supports technology developments for the agency under the Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC. She joined NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in 1989 as the chief microbiologist of the International Space Station (ISS) Environmental Control Life Support Systems (ECLSS) and later became the Agency project manager for the Advanced Life Support Systems. She has a bachelor of science in biology with a major in microbiology from the University of Puerto Rico in Rio Piedras and a master of science in microbiology with a minor in chemistry from the University of Alabama in Huntsville. [email protected]

Zoe Szajnfarber

Zoe Szajnfarber is a professor and chair of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering at The George Washington University. Her research focuses on the design and development of complex systems—primarily in the aerospace and defense sectors—considering both the organization and technical system architectures to “design-in” an ability to achieve performance goals across extended and highly uncertain operational lifetimes. Recent projects examine the nature and function of scientific and technical expertise in the design process, particularly in the context of open innovation. She has a bachelor’s degree in engineering science from the University of Toronto, dual master’s degrees in aeronautics and astronautics and technology policy, and a PhD in engineering systems from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has worked as a systems engineer and researcher at both space contractors and government agencies in Canada, Europe, and the United States. [email protected]