Design Inspiration From a Galaxy Far, Far Away

Every now and again on the TopCoder Blog – subscribe top left – we like to let our hair down and put aside talks of technology, Big Data and Open Innovation. Since yesterday was “Star Wars Day” (May the 4th Be With You), it’s the weekend, and the NHL playoffs are nicely underway, we decided this was a perfect opportunity to share some really fun designs blurring the worlds of Ice Hockey and most everyone’s favorite fantasy world, Star Wars. Kick back and enjoy the jump to hyperspace.

The following illustrations are from puckdrawn.com, a design community focused on hockey inspired concepts.

 

Even Luke wouldn’t have been “… a little short for a Storm Trooper.” on blades donning this imperial design…

Boba Fett, Where!!!?… A temporarily blinded Solo could still find these bright colors against the sheen of the white ice…

We never knew quite what they were saying, but we always knew they meant business!

Sure, you might think these things smell bad on the outside, but there’s no doubt they would look sharp on the frozen rink, or a frozen planet for that matter.

Concentrate all fire-power on the nearest goaltender!!!

Other designs from this contest can be viewed here.

If you want to compete on TopCoder Studio design contests, we invite you to join the community!

We hope you enjoyed this mental break. If you are itching to get back to Open Innovation and Big Data articles, here are few we suggest:

- The Invention of Innovation: What P.T. Barnum is About to Teach You, Again – step right up

- Big Data+Mobile+Sensors+Visualization+Gamification = Quantified Self – do the math

- The Universe as an Open API: NASA’s Plan on Getting There – blast off here

What is the Quantified Self Movement? – The Definitive Video

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If you are a subscriber to the TopCoder Blog (please subscribe top left if you are not) you have seen quite a number of posts over the last few months that cover the Quantified Self movement and individual applications and devices propelling the space forward. Just last week we covered an innovative device/mobile app combination dubbed ithlete that accurately measures your HRV (Heart Rate Variance) in just 60 seconds time. This is a measure that most physicians don’t even calculate, yet it’s paying huge dividends for world-class athletes who want to better understand how to optimize their training regimen, and therefore their “game time” performance. And that in and of itself is a microcosm of the entire movement. Individuals crave better data that is visualized for them and helps them make personal choices that improve their performance. The Quantified Self is the ultimate consumerization of IT and it is just getting started.

On Point Read: The 5 Pillars of the Quantified Self

Luckily for TopCoder and we think for the readers of this blog, the Cambridge, MA area is a hot bed of activity in this burgeoning space and a short drive from TopCoder HQ in Glastonbury, CT. Weeks ago, we took the road trip up to Cambridge and the surrounding areas and filmed three very unique companies all doing rather different things in the Quantified Self space. Below is the first video in what is a 4-part series.

This video:

• Gives you a great understanding of the Quantified Self movement and why it is disruptive
• Discusses what will help Quantified Self ditch the niche realm and move on to the masses
• Looks deeper into what personalization via technology can truly empower
• Asks what advances we can expect in the near-future in the Quantified Self space

Below the video, please take a moment to learn a bit about the companies featured in this series: Zeo, Affectiva and InsideTracker

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1f5_gimdC3g&feature=player_embedded

3 Companies Aiming for Disruption

Affectiva wants you to know it’s OK to cry… or laugh, or get angry for that matter. They measure emotion through a wearable wrist-band device, sophisticated algorithms and a visualized dashboard. If you begin to think of the markets who would enjoy capturing accurate emotional data, you can understand why the team at Affectiva is a bit giddy. www.affectiva.com

InsideTracker is delivering more accurate and individualized health, nutrition and wellness recommendations by tracking a growing list of “bio-markers” identified through laboratory bloodwork. They help you optimize and make better decisions regarding what goes into your body. A great consequence of more consistent testing is also the implications this will have to prevent and catch disease at extraordinarily early phases. www.insidetracker.com

Zeo believes the path to improved individual performance lies – quite literally – in how you sleep. Their device, software and mobile technologies track your sleep performance and deliver back quantified analytics that are changing people’s lives. Their commitment to an Open API and what is already being created on top of it would give anyway paying attention very sweet dreams. www.myzeo.com

Open Innovation’s Newest Challenge: Improving Medicaid

“The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is committed to fighting Medicaid fraud, which diverts funds from needed medical care for the most vulnerable Americans.  That’s why we’re announcing a challenge – the Provider Screening Innovator Challenge – to develop software tools that will help stop fraudsters from entering the Medicaid program under the pretense of serving patients.”

The above passage was written by Julie Boughn on the CMS Blog - The official blog for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) responsible for Medicare, Medicaid and CHIP. This initiative, the CMS Provider Screening Innovator Challenge, will take place as a series of Open Innovation contests over the next 8 to 9 months in a partnership between the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Harvard Business School, the State of Minnesota, and TopCoder. With over $500,000 available for prizes, this series of contests will showcase how the TopCoder community can tackle rather complex software builds via process-driven, atomized Open Innovation competitions.

For the official press release – click here

If you are researching the Gov2.0 arena or are just a supporter of the greater Open Innovation space, there are at least 4 complexities & nuances worth discussing further as it pertains to the CMS Provider Screening Innovator Challenge. They are:

• This effort is taking place without the need for traditional government vendor contracts. This alone is a shift worthy of praise, one that allows an entity such as TopCoder to bring our community to these challenges and structure scores of smaller, atomized contests that will innately draw out hyperspecialists to the work at hand. It fosters incredible flexibility & scale and helps ensure no single-point of failure will derail the overall effort. This is a big step forward.
• The entire project, all aspects will be open source. The ability for States to download the outputs and create State-specific applications on top of the open source solutions will provide another layer of value and help to greatly streamline costs.
• These outputs will all be built to the new standards set forth under the Medicaid Information Technology Architecture (MITA) 3.0 framework focusing on factors of interoperability, common standardization and adaptability of the technologies comprising the outputs. For an overview of MITA 3.0 and to better understand the importance of building to these specifications, we recommend this article that provides a comprehensive look into the updated architecture.
• The entire project is taking place on the Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation platform powered by TopCoder. Led by NASA, the CoECI was launched to enable acceleration of US Government implementation of new models of problem solving using collaborative innovation methodologies, such as crowd sourcing and open innovation, to meet agency requirements.

On the TopCoder Blog we routinely discuss that Open Innovation practices can deliver the complex and “never been done” and the CMS Provider Screening Innovator Challenge is certainly both. The first of many competitions comprising this entire effort has already kicked-off and if you are thinking about competing or just want more information on these contests, please visit this Center of Excellence page. Look for the short May 30th post entitled “And We’re Off!” on that page which includes links to the 2 kick-off contests.

Can this challenge help improve Medicaid fraud detection? We believe the answer is yes. We believe the solutions lie in Open Innovation and we encourage you to share this remarkable story and follow along as the details unfold before us.

7 Tips to Empower Your Members and Help Grow Your Community

We discuss quite a number of technologies and productivity techniques on the TopCoder Blog. Whether it’s ideas around how to tackle Big Data through Open Innovation competitions, or the disruptive capabilities of the quantified self movement and the “miracle” material Graphene, or is simply a fun design-focused post utilizing amazing imagery, we canvass quite a bit. We also routinely discuss community and it’s never lost on us that without our community, TopCoder would not even exist. We are – before and after anything else – a community.

As many of you are likely aware, we recently crossed the 400,000 community member marker a few months back and though most TopCoder members participate through virtual means, more and more TopCoder members are organizing and hosting traditional, physical meet-ups and coding events.

A long-time TopCoder community member crni (Dejan Pazin) recently organized and hosted such an event. We caught up with Dejan post-event and asked him 7 questions about his effort and event. His answers are worth the read and supplied us with 7 tips to empower your members to help you grow your community. Enjoy the interview and the 7 tips below.

Q1: Dejan, how long have you been a TopCoder community member and what is your area of expertise (or your favorite types of competitions)?

A1: I am from Ljubljana, Slovenia and I’ve been a TopCoder member since 2004. I am not really an expert, but I love competing against my friends at Algorithm Competitions. The point is that none of us train for these types of competition but luckily TopCoder offers DIV II for such competitors. We (including myself) managed to get some rewards, I still have the cheque for $20 stored at home.

Community Growing Community – Tip #1: All you need is love. There are individuals within your community who are very passionate about their involvement. The first tip is to allow them to showcase this passion as Dejan has done for TopCoder.

Q2: What was the inspiration behind hosting GoCoder? – When did you first get the idea to do this?

A2: It all started as an internal challenge among colleagues at work – being best at TopCoder was sort of prestige. Since it took a couple of hours during work, we later took it to the next level, agreed with management and arranged for the whole afternoon event. To make it even more fun we combined it with competing in Go-Karts. The motto here was that writing quality code is not enough, in the real world you need other skills too and racing Go-Karts seemed like a good candidate to symbolize that.

After a couple of internal events where we all had loads of fun, we realized that this is actually a quality team building effort as well. That’s when the idea of a public event was born – the GoCoder.

Community Growing Community – Tip #2: Competition is healthy. At TopCoder, all of the assets created for our clients are born from competition, so this is innate to our world. Perhaps your community is different, but it may be worth it to allow community members to structure fun competitions that foster participation.

Q3: What was the initial response from your community? Was it easy or hard to gain momentum, get folks interested in coming to a geo-location to gather for a live competition?

A1: It was easy to get those already competing on TopCoder to take part, but there are not many of them here in Slovenia. So I took the approach of presenting this as a reward for the hard working programmers and persuaded the management to give them the afternoon off. I soon got the 8 teams to apply. Maybe the slogan helped: Anti-stress therapy for competitive programmers

Community Growing Community – Tip #3: Let your community members get creative. You may know your community well, but they know their “world” better than anyone. Trust them to create value.

Q4: How many people competed? Of the competitors, how many were competing for the first time on TopCoder?

A1: In the end, 7 teams of 3 competitors showed up for the event (one team was out due to work related obligations). We were competing on TopCoder SRM (Single Round Match) 544 and for the vast majority of coders (15 or more) this was their first TopCoder competition. The results they achieved in the TopCoder competition were of course not superb, but that was not an issue at all – the fun was just as good.

Community Growing Community – Tip #4: Allow and encourage your members to do what is best for their niche community. At TopCoder we rarely host competitions involving teams. For Dejan, he felt this was a great way to motivate his group to participate. He weaved in a team element for his event that worked and still stayed within the structure of TopCoder competitions that require competition on an individual level.

Q5: Can you share with the community how you approached attaining sponsorship for this event and any advice you can give to others who might be looking to host their own event?

A1: Obviously, finding the sponsors is the hardest part. First off, this is completely new to all of the potential sponsors and second, the recession is still in effect, so no one is very keen on sponsoring anything. So I took the low budget – big fun approach. By that I mean this was a cheap way to get programmers a quality team building experience. In order to get the prize sponsors I spoke with a small company, which needs all the publicity they can get. For the main prize I managed to get a single sponsor – I simply got lucky here as a large company I contacted went along with it.

Community Growing Community – Tip #5: Encourage members who are hosting an event to concentrate on value. Dejan delivered an alternate team building exercise and did so in a relatively inexpensive way.

Q6: What were the toughest parts of creating and hosting this event? What might you do differently next time now that you have hosted this first one?

A1: I guess the fact that the idea is completely new to everyone makes it really hard. Once you have some history to show for, or some reference from someone else, it should be easier. Next time I’d like to make it even bigger, maybe 40 people or so, and have enough sponsors to make it almost free for competing.

Community Growing Community – Tip #6: Zero to one is the hardest lift. As an operator of a community do all you can to showcase efforts like Dejan’s so the next person who wants to host their own gathering understands it has been done before and they are empowered to do it as well.

Q7: Any other tips?

A7: If there is just one tip I can give, it would be: Don’t forget about the fun! Make it look and feel cool and relaxed. The programmers have enough stress already, what they need is stress-free fun.

And one more thing: I have to thank TopCoder for your help and support.

Community Growing Community – Tip #7: Fun is very powerful. Many join a community because it offers them an opportunity to do work on, or become educated in an area they deem fun and personally rewarding. Do all you can to help your community members who are leading efforts like this to ramp-up the fun factor!

We at TopCoder would like to send a very special thank you to Dejan Pazin for organizing this ambitious event. It is efforts like yours that make our community truly special and we appreciate all you have done and continue to do. Thank you Dejan.

3 Ways to Attract the Right Talent to a New Open Innovation Challenge

At TopCoder, we are asked a lot of questions and we understand why. Our community of more than 409,000 developers, algorithmists and digital designers combined with how we produce assets via our Open Innovation competition methodology is a brand new idea to many who are seeking a new way forward in innovation and productivity. We’ve been astutely listening to all of your questions and thought it would be valuable to the vast majority of our current and future blog readers to begin a new series dubbed “Just the FAQ’s”. A tad tongue-in-cheek it is, but this series is specifically crafted to provide you with answers to questions that we are being asked on a consistent basis. Today’s FAQ topic is:

How do you attract the right talent from your community to a brand new technology?

Whether we are in with an existing client or chatting with a potential one that is thinking of joining our community and accessing our competition platform, the question of how we position our community to work on very specific, or even brand new technologies comes up quite often. So let’s review a few ways TopCoder does exactly this.

First, it’s worthy to mention that the very absurdity of the pace of technology, just how fast things move these days, is a big driver of enterprises to explore our platform and capabilities. They recognize they can no longer “island hop” and chase the newest technological evolution that requires hyperspecialized talent to produce within it. A big advantage of joining and accessing a community like TopCoder is that the community members are continuously updating, honing and learning new skills on an individual level. As new technologies, languages and preferences emerge, those already plugged into the community can enjoy the benefits of a community that is continually educating “itself”. Back to how we attract the right talent to new technologies, there are several, structured ways we go about this task.

#1 – Shout, Shout Let It All Out

Operating a global community of more than 409,000 people has taught us that communication out to the individuals who comprise the whole is paramount in enabling a desired reaction. Luckily, at our disposal today are myriad ways to communicate with our members. When we have a new technology or challenge we are attempting to attract individuals to, we create a communication outreach campaign that often includes some combination of the following:

• News Item Post  -community.topcoder.com/tc is a great visibility tool. TopCoder members not only visit this page quite often, but any news item featured on this page (pictured above) is also delivered via email to our members. This is a great asset and our first and foremost ‘weapon of choice’ to get the word out and in a hurry.

• TopCoder Forums – Inside our community is a network of very popular forums. It’s a main communication channel for community members and making sure this news hits the intra-airwaves provides another touch-point to our members.
• TopCoder is Social – Our Facebook page has over 5,180 fans, Twitter is near 3,500, G+, LinkedIn, YouTube … you get the idea. Often our social members are very engaged participants who compete rather often and therefore they are a perfect group to target with the newest competitions.

• Survey Says! – Good old fashioned surveys out to the community work great! Often we’ll offer community members a chance to win a TopCoder t-shirt just by filling out the survey and we’ll get back honest answers on their abilities in that skill and their interest level in learning more about a new technology. 

It also doesn’t hurt when publications such as Mashable decide to cover ambitious Open Innovation challenges as they did for this NASA / TopCoder effort – ‘The Ultimate App’

#2 If You Build it, They Will Come

You may or may not know that at TopCoder, our clients join our community, access our platform and then execute scores of projects on top of the platform. Our clients are bringing a very high-volume work load to our members. This work is rarely of the “one off” variety. Instead it is dozens and even hundreds of projects per quarter. There is another word for this in the business world, a pipeline.

If a client is serious about gaining an advantage in a specific new technology, we encourage them to put in a pipeline of work, not just a singular project. Why? Our members are very smart and those who compete professionally are routinely checking the pipeline of opportunity coming their way. If they are being advised to “hone up” on a particular skill or language and then can pair that advisement with a robust pipeline of work on the horizon, the individuals do the hard work and come prepared to compete.

Many competitors are here to gain skills and have fun competing, others make their living (and good ones) winning TopCoder competitions. If they can visualize and understand an opportunity, they will ramp-up and take advantage of it.

#3 Show Them the Money

Typically we will work with our clients and encourage them to offer higher than normal prize amounts for new technologies. This helps attract both members with that particular skill set and top rated TopCoder members who have shown a propensity for quickly acquiring a new skill or language. An increase of a few hundred dollars in prize money can have a very positive impact with regards to contest participation and therefore the outputs born from competition.

Predicting Success While Failing Fast & Cheap

We guide our clients and assure that they understand that as we align the community to a new technology, there will most likely be a learning curve and we may not realize a 100% success the first time “out”. We simply have to plan for this and do so by communicating openly with our clients that this may take several attempts, tweaks and iterations before the assets are consistently strong in the new technology. Being part of a community from the client’s perspective has some interesting shared benefits. Often, another client’s experimentation will directly benefit your outputs down the road.

The TopCoder platform also features a predictive analysis engine that allows clients to visualize the likelihood of success during the registration phase of any contest. If the right level of talent and reliability rating are lacking, meaning those registering to compete on a particular piece of code, algorithm challenge or design do not often produce quality outputs, the predictive engine will alert the client and recommend that the contest does not proceed past registration. In other words, something is “off” prior to “launch” and it’s best to take the rocket off the launch-pad, examine why we weren’t attracting the right level of talent, and prep the contest to launch again at a later date.

Often the reasons for a non-healthy registration are easily recognizable and therefore correctable. The point is, all of this adjustment is taking place before a contest moves forward, meaning the client is saving both time & money.

Finally, if a contest does fail – and yes it does happen – this means the outputs received did not meet a standard of acceptance, no prize monies are rewarded and the client does not pay for that contest. In today’s marketplace, the ability to experiment, try often, fail fast and cheaply and as a consequence of attempting more, succeed more often, is a key reason enterprises decide to join the TopCoder community.

Just the FAQ’s – Wrap Up

In this world of platforms and communities it is one thing to have gathered your masses. The real skill is in being able to communicate to them as individuals and to drive actions that equate to hyperspecialists from within the community, self-selecting new opportunities and choosing to compete. At TopCoder, through time, trial and error and continuous refinement, we have a defined process that most often results in great success for our clients and our community

Part II of the lessons learned  from the TopCoder Customer Round Table – you can enjoy Part I here

 

 

When we hear the term 4-Letter word, our minds tend to trend toward the “gutter” of our personal vernacular. Even the most PG of 4-letter thoughts might have you playing back Bill Cosby’s genius, alone on stage against a simplistic red-screen as he uttered the “Flin, Flarn Filth”. But, what is the only real 4-letter word when it comes to innovation? What do you think? Is it fear? Is it fail? Or is it something different?

You may or perhaps not yet have heard that TopCoder is officially unveiling a new way forward in innovation and productivity dubbed EOI standing for Enterprise Open Innovation. The below is from the official press release, which is linked here, enjoy this small snippet:

“Underlying EOI is the concept of broadcast search that connects domain experts and idea generators through collaborative platforms that feature new approaches to solve complex business and social challenges that would be difficult, if not impossible, to achieve traditionally.”

The announcement will take place during the MIX MashUp on June 19th out in San Francisco, CA and will be delivered by TopCoder founder and chairman, Jack Hughes. MIX stands for Management Innovation Exchange, an open innovation project that is aimed at reinventing management for the 21st century. The premise: while “modern” management is one of humankind’s most important inventions, it is now a mature technology that must be reinvented for a new age.

Much like the description above, Open Innovation and Crowdsourcing have proven to be extraordinarily powerful ways to create brilliant assets for scores of industries and sectors. However, the ability to continuously scale and manage Open Innovation competitions and challenges, to truly embed the fabric of Open Innovation into the existing entity, the enterprise, has been itself a challenge. As we’ve discussed previously on the TopCoder Blog, individuals within the enterprise can be quite hesitant to embrace Open Innovation. Perhaps they feel threatened, perhaps it’s just new, and therefore change is resisted. Undoubtedly, there can be scores of reasons for an individual or small group within an enterprise to not fully embrace Open Innovation practices. However, global enterprises continue to foster and join communities and begin experimentation on top of competitive & collaborative platforms. Why?

The 4-Letter Word of Innovation is … ?

Leaders in business and government alike are realizing a logical conclusion.

1. The pace of technology, which drives innovation is seemingly exponential
2. To continuously innovate in this hyper-paced environment, the enterprise (or agency) must find ways to “take more swings”
3. The traditional methods of innovation are incapable of producing “more swings” in a way that is cost effective and time efficient while ensuring the right talent is sourced for the tasks at hand

When you take more swings, you are taking more chances. The rewards can be grand but you must be willing to embrace this 4-letter word… You must find a way to take on more risk. For those lucky enough to be attending the MIX MashUp later this month, you will hear first hand how EOI enables much more risk taking, while generating extreme value outcomes through open, collaborative and competitive means.

It’s a new day in innovation and productivity. How will EOI change how you, your team, your enterprise continuously innovates? We’re a few short days away from the unveiling.

For those wanting more on Open Innovation today – June 12th, 2012 – there is an amazing event being live-streamed from Washington D.C. featuring speakers from GE, NASA, Harvard Business School, the Department of Veterans Affairs and more canvassing the topic of collaborative innovation and utilizing prizes to ignite the innovative passions of the public sector – You can enjoy the content here - http://www.casefoundation.org/collaborative-innovation

3 Tips on Communicating with an Open Innovation Community

Communication breakdown, it’s always the same. No matter if it’s a global enterprise or a local Little-League team, communication between the individuals that comprise the whole is paramount to success. When you are producing assets with a global community and hosting scores of Open Innovation challenges to procure those assets, the focus on how you communicate with the individuals competing only intensifies. Whether you are on the TopCoder platform as a client or simply looking to better how well you communicate with your crowds, social fans and contributors, here are three communication tips that will help you get the very most from the individuals who comprise your communities.

For the three tips below, it’s important to realize varying contest types will require different approaches, especially when reading tip #3 where the amount of detail you offer in a contest specification will vary greatly between a creative design contest and a software development contest.

 

 

1. Be on Time, Every Time

If you are hosting competitions or asking your contributors to perform some act for you, you are most likely setting some submission deadline, some date and time that their contributions are due. It is imperative that you then reciprocate this adherence to established deadlines when it is time to perform your duties. What kinds of duties are we talking about? As an example: In the world of TopCoder there are often milestones, a set date where submissions are reviewed and feedback is given, allowing the competitors to digest the feedback and alter their submissions based on the client feedback. Milestone feedback is due to the competitors within a certain time-frame. If you are asking others to adhere to a strict submission schedule (and in Open Innovation practices, you should be), then you must meet your own deadlines, every single time. It’s a matter of respect for those around the globe who are taking their time to participate in the community and submit their work. If you demand it of them, demand it of yourself.

2. You Must be Honest

It does no member of a community any good to be dis-honest or less than honest. If a particular submission is simply not that strong and you are looking to offer that individual feedback, don’t be afraid to be honest. You can do this without being offensive or rude and in a way that is truly constructive for the individual submitter. Why does this matter? Inside a competitive community, those competing are often working on something they’d like to master or get much better at. Sometimes people enter competitions because they want practice, they are striving to gain a new skill and improve themselves. That kind of community behavior should always be supported, and the best way to do so is to offer them honest advice, while politely laying out ways the individual can seek to improve or hone their skill. At TopCoder, we have witnessed coders, algorithmists and designers go from very humble beginnings, work hard, listen and apply feedback, compete often and emerge as a consistently strong competitor. That individual progression happens when the individual understands what to improve, and that is a consequence of honest communication.

3. Give Detail Without Micro-Managing Creativity

When you are setting up a new competition it is crucial to give guidance as to what you are hoping to see in their submissions. Often, our clients will provide a reference to an existing asset to further the point. However, be careful not to take this exercise too far. If you offer too much detail you can stifle creativity and lose would be competitors who most likely would have submitted quality, innovative work. Remember, you like what you like because you’ve encountered it and though it may be a great solution – like an intuitive UI experience – you should leave room, and even expect to be surprised. There are over 410,000 members in the TopCoder community spanning more than 220 countries. That adds up to a whole lot of cultures and experiences and preferences you most likely have not encountered yet. When you create your contests, give direction, shed some light on your preferences, but don’t attempt to micro-manage creativity. Instead, when it comes to the details, be purposefully vague, allow your community to ask the questions they want to ask and encourage them through communications to bring their unique experiences to the solution. You will end up with a greater variety of solutions and maybe even a few submissions that completely blow you away.

Do you have an Open Innovation or Crowdsourcing management tip our readers could benefit from? Please, drop us a comment and add to this discussion.

Are You Building the Death Star, Again?

TopCoder is a community of more than 410,000 developers, algorithmists and digital designers. Many of whom would proudly self-classify as a geek, or at least a passionate Sci-Fi fan. Needless to say, the majority of our members enjoy the epic saga that took place a long, long time ago. One part of the saga that is often discussed and pointed to as being a weaker aspect of the original trilogy is that the Empire, after striking back, was defeated (again) because the Rebel Alliance was able to penetrate the un-penetrate-able Death Star and blow it up… again.

It raises the questions: Why would they go down this road? Why would they re-construct such a technological terror when the first one failed so fantastically? Fans of the series might nitpick this plot choice, but the reality is, this is exactly what enterprises, project teams and individuals choose to do over and over again.

People choose to go down roads they have already traveled, even if they’ve proven to consistently produce less than ideal results.There are several reasons for this:

• It’s what they know how to do – This is what they are good at!
• Their appetite for change and risks associated with change prevent new action
• It’s easier, even if ultimately less effective than a new way forward 
• Leadership illuminating a way forward is lacking or not communicated effectively

Now the question that matters most to you: Are you doing the same? Are you building the Death Star, again?

For this exercise, think of your own personal Death Star not as a product or service you are building out or perhaps already offer, but rather focus on the very way you bring innovative ideas into your enterprise and then execute on them. Are you doing what you have always done? Are your eyes open to what others are accomplishing via platforms, through Open Innovation communities that are powered by competition and collaboration? Are you willing to change?

Whether you are leading a global enterprise, are a leading member of a team focused on project-level work or bravely ushering in a new start up, there are 3 realities the nimble enterprise and the individuals leading these companies are realizing in the early part of this 21st Century.

#1 You Need to Continuously Innovate – It’s not enough to maintain. It’s not enough to only maximize profits from existing products and services. The enterprise must keep innovating or it faces dire consequences.

#2 The Pace of Technology Will Not Let You “Go It Alone” – Technologies, user preferences and more evolve at a hyper-pace and the pressures this puts on an enterprise in terms of recruiting and retaining top talent are incredible. What is “hot” is in a constant state of flux and attempting to chase the newest trend in technology means one thing… You’re not leading.

#3 Open Innovation has Evolved Dramatically – The era of non-scalable open ended challenges is being ushered out and replaced with process driven Enterprise Open Innovation (EOI). Platforms that transform how you approach every day productivity and how you connect with worldwide, specialized talent in an always-on global environment have arrived.

If the Emperor hadn’t been thrown over the railings by Anakin Skywalker and he – the Emperor – escaped the Death Star’s second implosion, what would the Empire have done, rebuild the Death Star for the 3rd time?

Again, the far more serious question… Would you do the same?

3 Things R.A. Dickey Teaches Us About Innovation

Once in a blue moon a sports phenomenon crosses over and joins the mainstream media discussion. The stories that come out of left field aren’t born from the Jordan’s, Gretzky’s and Woods’ of the world. They – the omnipresent sports star – have been in the spotlight their entire careers where greatness was expected and failure was the oddity. It’s the non-star, the true underdog story that we love and in this moment in time there is no greater tale than a scraggly looking knuckle-baller who tosses every 5th-day for the team hailing from Flushing, NY. We’re of course talking about New York Mets starting pitcher R.A. Dickey. When you examine his tale, his struggles and his recent triumphs, three amazin’ lessons in innovation float right up to the top.

R.A. Dickey – An Innovator on the Hill

If you don’t know his stats or perhaps you just don’t follow baseball or sports, let’s bring you up to speed quickly. As of today – June 22nd, 2012 – he’s sporting a league best record of 11 – 1 with an Earned Run Average (ERA) of only 2.00. He’s the leading candidate to start the All-Star game for the National League and he’s a clear early season candidate for the Cy Young award rewarded to the best pitcher in baseball come regular season’s end. In other words, he’s had a career half-year and it’s his road to this point we should examine further.

The Persistent, Win

Ever notice those who have success typically had to go through incredibly difficult times before knocking one out of the proverbial park? In innovation, winners were usually losers first. They failed, they failed a lot, and when most would decide it’s time to stop attempting, those who push through and try again are the ones who emerge a winner.

Did you know R.A. Dickey was drafted in the first round (18th overall pick) in the 1996 draft by the Texas Rangers? Did you know he was offered a size-able $800K+ signing bonus, only to have it drastically shaved down to $75,000 after a physical exam revealed he was simply missing a crucial ligament in his elbow? After several mediocre and poor seasons with the Rangers, Dickey thought the best way to extend his career was to further develop a knuckle-ball pitch he had been tinkering with for seasons. The Rangers gave him one more shot as a starting pitcher in 2006, naming him their 5th starter out of five, in a typical rotation. Unfortunately for Dickey, in his first start as a true Knuckle-baller, he allowed 6 home runs and was demoted to Triple-A after the effort. His decade long career in the Texas organization was effectively over.

Over the next few years R.A. found himself up and down from Triple-A, back to the majors with both the Mariners and Twins organizations. All the while, he was steadily becoming a better pitcher. In early 2010 he signed a minor-league contract with the New York Mets and after a solid 2010 season, signed a multi-year, multi-million dollar deal. He was firmly back in the “bigs”.

This year, the man has simply been un-hit-able and at the ripe “old” age of 37 – which is rather old for a Major League pitcher – R.A. Dickey is off to a start even Bob Gibson might envy.

When most decide to quit, it’s those that keep attempting that seem to usually win out. Keep in mind, as we just discussed in a recent post – Are You Building the Death Star, Again? – we’re not talking about repeating what you’ve always done and hoping you somehow succeed. We are talking about the combination of undeniable persistence with the willingness and wherewithal to experiment. Which leads us nicely into our second point on the art of mastering.

The Road to Mastery is Paved with Failure

R.A. Dickey became amazing not because he mastered 4 or 5 pitches. He has a mid-80′s fastball he can decently spot and a traditional off-speed pitch you will rarely see. He is not a generalist. R.A. Dickey is the epitome of a hyper-specialist, throwing what is being hailed as the hardest knuckle-ball ever seen. He has a certain control of this floating pitch that has also never been matched. Where traditional knuckle-ballers have stumbled, control and consistency on the pitch itself, R.A. has become a master and you just read a few paragraphs on how long it took him to achieve such a level.

His road to mastery is paved in a million micro-failures and this is a way you can treat your innovative efforts. You must be willing to experiment, fail, learn, tinker, try again, fail, tinker… until you succeed.

At TopCoder, we of course talk often about how Enterprise Open Innovation (EOI) can help you take many more swings at lower levels of risk and it’s the same premise re-applied. Whether innovating traditionally or through a global community, you must be willing to fail in order to succeed.

Interested in better understanding TopCoder’s Enterprise Open Innovation platform and competition methodology? Join us for our next webinar - REGISTER HERE - Space is limited.

Know Your Core

Whether you are a start-up or a billion dollar enterprise, you should know your core. You should know why you exist, your purpose, the things that matter most to you and every single one of your efforts should bolster what are your core principles.

One piece of the R.A. Dickey story that doesn’t get reported as much is his scaling of Mount Kilimanjaro that took place between the 2011 and 2012 baseball season. Dickey risked his entire 2012 salary – a very handsome $4,250,000 – and pledged to donate the millions to a charity combating human trafficking in India if he and a few friends couldn’t complete the journey. He did in fact complete the climb and through his efforts raised over $100,000 in donations for the charity he was illuminating. This from a man who struggled mightily for so many years to break-through. At his core, he was just doing what he thought was right.

At your core, no matter where you are at in your path to reaching your goals or continuing to grow, never lose sight of what drives you and innovate with the purpose of bolstering your core principles each and every time you take to the hill that is innovation.