We at Huladyne have recently been looking at various business models that would be alternatives to the traditional consulting model. One pattern of models that caught our eyes were the “Open R&D” models, in which innovation is licensed or crowd-sourced. By definition, Inside-out Open R&D models allow a company to take a lot of their idle R&D and license it out to others to use, while Outside-In Open R&D models have a company reach out and solicit ideas from other organizations or individuals.

One example of an Outside-In type platform is Innocentive, https://www.innocentive.com. Innocentive spun out of Eli Lily in the last decade, and seeks to match folks needing innovation (the “Seekers”) with idea generators and problem solvers (the “Solvers”). Innocentive also has advisors available to help shepherd the process. Looking at some of the prize money, breadth of problems, and number of solvers, we can imagine that someone skilled in a particular area could support many companies (and themselves) by becoming a professional problem solver.

Brad Wiederholt at Huladyne has started experimenting in this space as a Solver. We are also interested in becoming Seekers and work with some problem-solving collaborators. Innocentive has a Brainstorming mode where we could pose a design problem and have a few dozen thinkers around the world provide some ideas. The prize money we would need to award is very reasonable and getting good ideas in this fashion is great leverage for us and our clients.

What do you think? Could you use Huladyne and some leveraged thinkers to attack your mobile and user experience problems?