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Harnessing the Power of the Crowd
Using Crowd-Based Challenges as Tools for Engineering Projects
NASA’s Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation (CoECI)
Steve Rader [email protected] @NASA_NTL
ChallengesFood Supplies
Clean Water
Rising Sea Levels Global WarmingAsteroids
3
Nanotechnology
Remote Hyper Spectral
SensingGenomics
Technology Explosion Moore’s Law
4
How do we take advantage of this explosion of technology
advancement from around the world to solve our Problems?
How do we stay current on everything that is going on in technology that could help us
our problem?
5
We are used to the model of “the expert”, that keeps up with all of the tech advancements that we need for a given field. In the past, our biggest struggle has been to find and keep these experts!But now, the expert you need today is different than the expert you need tomorrow….
The pace of technology development is just too much.
Individuals cannot
possibly keep up with the technology
advancements
Even if you could find the right expert for your problem, could you afford them?
Would you be able to work through the red tape to get them to work with
you?
What would you do with him after you have your answer and you need to move to the next expert area?What about all of the technology advancement
that is going on out there that doesn’t
NEED an expert… it just needs you to find it!
It is all like looking for a
needle in a
haystack!
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But we now have an advantage!
A global population thatis becoming increasingly CONNECTED by the INTERNET.
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Internet User Growth from 2000-2012 and Potential
Asia1.1B
28%
Europe519M
63%
Africa
167M
16%
North Americ
a274M
79%
Latin Americ
a255M
43%
Middle
East90M
40% Oceana/Austrialia
24M68%
The World2.4B34%
Users in 2000
Additional users by 2012
Population Not on the
Internet YET
Current # of Users
% of Population
that is Online
566% Growth from 2000-2012
LegendBased on table from: http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
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With more and more of the world’s population on the Internet, the ability to access people with unique skills, expertise, and experience is rapidly increasing.
Academic students researchers
faculty
Retired scientists, engineers, & programmers
Current “under-employed”
scientists, engineers, & programmers
The Tip of the Iceberg! Not only are the Billions of people around the world rapidly getting online. Right now, the 2.8B people that ARE online are just barely aware of these platforms and what they mean to them…
10
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Cognitive Surplus
This “interest” in using their skills to make a difference or win a prize outside of normal employment (at night or on the weekends) can be described as….
People seem genuinely interested in engaging in problem solving and being “the one” to make a difference!
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If two heads are
better than
one….
Now consider how this cognitive surplus begins to become a powerful
force as more of the current 2.8 billion connected individuals join in the
efforts and the remaining 4.2 billion become connected on the Internet.
The possibilities to harness the creativity of the human mind are enormous!
Image: Illumination Entertainment, Universal Studios
But just because 2.8 Billion people are connected does NOT mean that they are organized ….
AT ALL…
In fact it can be chaos.
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In fact… it’s fascinating what global connectivity has meant to many.
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Networks & Communities
Curated Communities
InventorsSoftware Coders
Film-Makers
Photographers
Graphic Artists
Engineers & Designers
800,000*
84,000*1,081,000
745,000
50,000
1,860,000*estimate
Well formulated crowd-based platforms actively work tobuild a community of users that are passionate enthusiasts.
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Curated CommunitiesResources and
Tools for Members
Incentives for Members to Participate
User Agreements for
Privacy and Payment
Mechanism for Handling IP
Licensing and/or Transfer
Community Building &
Communication
Curated communities are built around enabling people to pursue their passion and create a win-win for the company and its community members.
They provide structure and incentives.
Communities do NOT like to be exploited!
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Gold G
uts Good G
loryWhy Does The Crowd Contribute?
Earn Money (real or virtual)Have Fun (or pass the time)
Socialize with OthersObtain Recognition or
Prestige (leaderboards, badges)
Do Good (altruism)Learn Something New
Obtain Something ElseCreate Self-Serving Resource
Crowdsourcing & Human Computation Labeling Data & Building Hybrid Systemsby Matthew Lease, Assistant Professor at University of Texas at Austin on May 03, 2013http://www.slideshare.net/mattlease/crowdsourcing-human-computation-labeling-data-building-hybrid-systems
Multiple Incentives can often operate in parallel
Effectively Using Communities
Create an Innovative New
Solution
Apply an Existing
Technology (in an innovative
way)
Access Best Possible
Product or Service
(competition winner)
Find an Existing Solution
(you didn’t know existed)
Access Very Specific
Expertise(found through
competition)
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Solve a Problem
Develop a Product
Provide a Service
Innovation from Diversity found via Challenges (Experience, Context/Perspective, Expertise)
Expert or Domain Focused MembershipDiverse Membership
High Quality Products/Services(via Competition to get Best in Domain)
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The Crowd Just Gave Me 3500
Solutions…
Now What Do I Do?
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If you aren’t careful, you end up sorting through a heap of potential solutions … …most of which are
NOT what you need!
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Crowdsourcing innovative solutions is really a lot more like mining…. You need special processes and tools to extract the gold from the ore.
22Executing a Crowd-Sourced Challenge
Formulate the Problem Statement
Design the Challenge
Execute the Challenge
Pick the Winner(s)Judging
Get Your Solution IP licensing and/or transfer
Solution Filtering (optional)
Knowing how to do all of these steps really helps tomitigate the issues associated with this “too many solutions” problem.
ALL of these steps can help to minimize the number of solutions you end up needing to judge.
A well formulated problem statement (with good success criteria)
A well designed challenge (including setting the right prize
amount)
Solution filtering mechanisms are
offered by some platforms
We Can Use the Crowd as a Force
Multiplier…
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…To Do MORE with LESS
www.infographically.com
This is an established and GROWING INDUSTRY!
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Crowdsourcing is Mainstream
What is NASA Doing with Crowdsourcing?
NASA Innovation Pavilion
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“One Stop Shop” Website which Lists ALL NASA Challenges
http://www.nasa.gov/solve
Centennial Challenges
NTL Curated Community Challenges
Citizen Science Challenges
Space Apps ChallengeSoftware
Apps
Scientific Observations/C
ontributions
Tech Dev & DemoYears
Months
Months
Days/Weeks
Duration Prizes Product Participation
$M+
$1K-$100Ks
Recognition
Recognition
Ideas, Designs, Software
29
30
First Things First!
NASA has some of the most amazing employees on the
PLANET!
Tap into that crowd FIRST!
31
Over 15,000 Registered Members(25% of NASA’s 60,000 CS & Contractor Workforce)
15-20 Challenges per Year
Growth of the NASA@work Community since October 2012
2-4 Active challenges posted at any one time
New challenge posts every ~2-3 weeks
People that work at NASA want to
make a difference!
Innovation & Problem Solving
Using Challenges with Diverse Communities to develop unique and innovative approaches to unsolved problems
NASA Innovation Pavilion on
33
Global Communityof 350,000+ Solvers
Diverse Member Base
High Success Rate in Solving Hard
Problems with Innovative Solutions Map showing participation of 2900 solvers
from 80 countries in NASA’s pilot challenges
34
“Diverse perspectives and tools enable collections of people to find more and better solutions.”
Diversity Trumps Ability Theorem: “The people you’d least expect to solve
a problem were exactly the ones most likely to crack it.”
Scott PageAuthor of Difference:
How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies
35
Diversity is the Key to Innovation
One MIT study into InnoCentive revealed that solvers were more successful when they had less
experience in the relevant discipline.
Some data suggests that as much as 70% of successful InnoCentive challenge solutions are solved by
individuals outside of the challenge’s specific technical
domain.
36
“In 60 days, Roche was able to solve a problem that it and its partner have been tinkering with and optimizing for the last 15 years. The solutions provided actually mirrored the entire history of Roche’s R&D programme. All of the solutions Roche had tried came in. “
Swiss company with 80,000 employees, Roche operates in 150 countries and has R&D operations in Europe, North America and Asia-PacificRoche is a world leader in in vitro diagnostics.
Julian Birkinshaw, MLabnotes, University of London Business School
Roche ran an InnoCentive challenge
37
$20,000 in prizesOver 2800 registrants219 Entries
Winning Submission: Barium tracers for atmospheric analysis
Winner was Ted Ground from Rising Star,
Texas (population 799)
38
Algorithm CompetitionsLeverage Competition to Optimize Complex
Algorithmic Problems
Case Study
CODERS SUBMITTED SOLUTIONS DIFFERENT APPROACHES TOSOLVE PROBLEM IDENTIFIED
WINNING COUNTRIESRUSSIA, FRANCE, EGYPT, BELGIUM & US
122 654 89 5
Improve on NIH MegaBlast algorithmfor nucleotide sequence alignment
Winning solution performs 120x faster
ANTIBODY SEQUENCE ANNOTATION
Source:
47 min. 16 sec.4.3 hours
$2M+ Multi-yearDevelopment
15% Improvement!Over current method of identifying asteroids in the main belt of Asteroids that orbit between Mars & Jupiter
1241 Registrants625 Solutions Submitted$74,124 in Prizes AwardedAlgorithm AND App
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Using Competitions for Software Development
Conceptualization
Specification
Wireframes
Storyboards
Architecture
Assembly
Component Dev
Bug Hunt
Bug Race
Idea Generation
Image Credit: Wikipedia, Systems development life-cycle, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life-cycle (as of Mar. 27, 2013, 05:48 GMT).
Source:
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Leverage Competition to Optimize Engineering Designs
Design Challenges
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GrabCAD 30 Day challenge for $3000: 492 CAD Designs Submitted
Using New Methods to Search for New and Emerging Technology to Meet NASA’s Needs
Searching for Technologies
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Nanotechnology
Remote Hyper Spectral
SensingGenomics
Technology Explosion Moore’s Law
Yet2.com
Provides a “matching” service that finds technologies and solutions from industry, academia, and/or individuals for a given need/challenge.
Includes a 130,000 member community and links to over 16,000 commercial entities.
Very effective (and cost effective) in searching for existing products or development efforts.
Yet2.com ChallengesBone Density Measurement
Monitoring of Water and Biocides
Non-Invasive Intra-Cranial Pressure Measurement“Much more than we expected! Very pleasantly surprised that this process exposed so many potential solutions with such wide breadth and depth”“Learned that we should have revisited technologies that we rejected earlier 81 Leads Identified
63 Rejected3 High Interest Solutions5 Other Interesting Solutions6 Potential Complementary Technologies
2 Potential Solutions
Non-
129 Challenges
4 Tech Surveys
2 Videos
1 Design
14 Algorithms
15 Software
2 Ideation
2 Graphics
76 Challenges
NASA Innovation Pavilion
9 Theoretical
2 Ideation
2 Reduction to Practice
NASA Challenge Experience with Curated
Communities
Includes NASA and other U.S. Gov’t Agency Challenges executed under NASA’s CoECI
Crowd-Based Challenges are valuable tools that should be considered for future engineering
projects
Effective Method to Find Truly Innovative Solutions
Key Method to Find the Right Existing Technologies (out of the sea of R&D work across a variety of domains)
Efficient Method to Augment Project Teams with Specialized Skills as Needed
Using Crowds as Engineering Tools
Steve [email protected]@steverader
AcknowledgementsReferences:
Crowdsourcing Landscape: www.crowdsourcingresults.com, www.infographically.comGlobal Internet Use: Based on table from: http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htmHowe, Jeff (2008-08-18). Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the
Future of Business, Doubleday Religious Publishing Group.
“Diverse perspectives and tools enable collections of people to find more and better solutions.”
Scott Page. Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies.
Karim R. Lakhani et al., “The Value of Openness in Scientific Problem Solving.”
Graphics: experts - http://directoryofexcelexperts.com/needle in haystack - http://siliconbeachclearly.com/global network - http://www.emirates.com/iceberg - http://www.weirdoptics.com/iceberg-illusion/minions - Illumination Entertainment, Universal Studioslolcats – http://background-pictures.picphotos.net/farmville – http://farmville.startpagina.nltinder – http://apptiinder.comthumbsdown – http://commons.wikimedia.orgcommunity – http://www.blogworld.comminivan – http://vzyalslidingdoor.blogspot.commilking machine - greenfusestock.photoshelter.comrocket scientists – LIFE magazineinnovation – http://abovethecrowd.comproblem solving – http://creativerealities.comequations – http://gallaryhip.com, http://imaginenvision.comdesigns – http://www.grabcad.com