NASA Gets Help From Amateurs

In 2004, NASA started the Centennial Challenges to solicit ideas from the public in a variety of categories.

The Amateur Future of Space Travel in the New York Times Sunday Magazine was a fascinating account of how Peter K. Homer, an out-of-work director of a local community center in Maine, came up with the winning solution to NASA's space glove problem. Reading about Homer's "aha moment" in the middle of the night will make believers of all of us that solutions can come from anywhere at anytime. It was Homer's past experience sewing sails that provided the necessary insight to overcome the problem of providing strength while maintaining dexterity.

Innocentive is another example of companies looking beyond their corporate walls for solutions to their innovation problems by applying an open source or open collaboration strategy. Casting their lines out to a population of solvers has led to solutions to numerous problems and financial rewards for the solvers.