If you have a problem, ask everyone.
July 22nd, 2008Offering prizes for scientific achievements is hardly new.”It has been around for centuries,”said Karim R. Lakhani, a professor at Harvard Business School who has studied InnoCentive. One early example was the work of John Harrison, the 18th-century clockmaker who, in response to a prize offered by the British Parliament, solved the problem of determining longitude at sea by inventing a clock that would keep good time even in heavy weather.
July 22nd, 2008 at 10:13 am
This is the coolest thing I have read in ages. Imagine if we created an environment where communities could post their challenges, large or small. Now that would be an engaged institution……
July 22nd, 2008 at 1:37 pm
There are some burgeoning social networking groups out there that allow individuals to give small grants or loans to individuals making a difference. The one I follow, for example, is a micro-lending site called kiva.org (www.kiva.org). This group organizes and monitors micro-lending groups in developing countries (including scoring their effectiveness and repayment status), yet allows users to provide small $25 loan “nuggets” directly to the people making a difference in their communities. Those community members buy refrigerators for their stores in Nicaragua, set up school clothing repair and exchange businesses in Botswana, and so on. You know when and how much money is paid back by those in whom you have invested, and you can either reinvest the money paid back to another project or have it returned to your credit card. Any interest accrued goes to the micro-lending and Kiva directly from what I can tell.
I’ve seen similar sites (I can’t recall the names at this point) that have a similar set up for teachers in poor school districts to get supplies they need (Clinton’s school computer initiative in the 90’s didn’t include the computer desks, for example) or small micro-lending opportunities for college students, small businesses, and innovation seed funding. Kiva is now pretty well established, but I don’t know the reputation of these other ones coming around.