

Just learned of InnoCentive, cool freelance projects, not strictly programming. - networkjester
https://www2.innocentive.com/

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wgrover
My wife and I submitted a proposal for an Innocentive challenge sponsored by
the local science museum a while back. The task was to design the next great
traveling exhibit for science museums, and we had fun writing our proposal. A
few months later we received an email announcing the names of the winning
teams, and that's all - no details on the winning proposals, no feedback on
our submission. I understand that they can't give everyone customized
feedback, but I was still left feeling like I got absolutely nothing from the
experience - I have no idea what parts of my proposal needed improvement, no
idea how to make my next proposal better. For a different kind of challenge
(say I found a successful way to "convert lactic acid to acrylic acid" but my
solution still wasn't chosen), I'd probably be angry about the lack of
transparency. So yeah, that was probably the first and last time I'll try to
solve one of their challenges.

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ivanstojic
All of the projects make me sigh with wonder and fill me with desire to dust
off the secret biochemical lab that I have in my basement.

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FiReaNG3L
Don't, the 'rewards' are ridiculously low for both the effort they demand and
the money you could make out of it if you actually solved these problems.

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notahacker
It does have a hint of 99designs about it - basically competing with others
for a prize which is less than the minimum fee they'd expect to pay a
competent contractor for time spent _trying_ to achieve a solution.

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nowarninglabel
Wikinomics talks about Innocentive, saying at the time there were "ninety
thousand scientists from 175 countries" registered there, and that "firms will
build their R&D organizations around a core of question askers and outsource
most of the problem solving" Actually, I think they mention Innocentive over
two dozen times in the book and how it was supposed to revolutionize the
world. Meh. There is the book on Amazon if you haven't seen it:
[http://amzn.com/1591843677?itag=nowarlab-20&linkCode=as2](http://amzn.com/1591843677?itag=nowarlab-20&linkCode=as2)

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Vivtek
The blurb says they have "thousands" of challenges, but the actual list
contains twenty-four. And who owns the winning solution? The solver, or
whichever $BIGMULTINATIONAL just paid chump change for something that will
earn them billions?

