Bob and Martin, welcome to the podcast. For those who are new to InnoCentive, tell us how this unique marketplace came about and why InnoCentive is such a good fit with the SAP online community.

Bob Fucci: InnoCentive is the leader in prize-based open innovation. We were founded as a company in 2002 and have been successfully connecting seekers and solvers since our earliest days. Here's a little bit of how open innovation works. A seeker is an organization that's looking for a breakthrough technology, and they post a challenge using our secure Web 2.0 platform; that seeker describes the challenge and commits to pay the successful solver a cash reward. That solver is an individual who registers on the InnoCentive web site and they submit proposed solutions.

Reed: So, we've talked a little bit about seekers and solvers. Can you tell us how these roles apply to solving SAP-related projects on InnoCentive?

Martin Raepple: That's a good question, Jon. Basically, as Bob mentioned, seekers are the companies that post challenges on the InnoCentive marketplace. What we should also mention here is that there is a special place in the InnoCentive marketplace where it's easy to find all the SAP-related challenges: it's the SAP Pavilion. Seeker companies in the SAP ecosystem can be SAP partners, system integrators, technology partners, SAP customers and, as we started with this partnership, it can be SAP who post challenges in the SAP Pavilion.

Solvers are basically all of the members of SAP's community of innovation: members of the SDN community, members of the BPX community or the Business Objects community. Every individual who has a good and deep knowledge of SAP technology and solutions can participate in these challenges because that's actually what is asked for in these challenges - a good knowledge of SAP. So if you are an expert and an SAP professional, you are highly welcome to participate in these challenges because they basically ask for your experience.

Reed: Let's take a closer look at the solver role. What does it take to become an active solver on InnoCentive and what kinds of challenges have SAP solvers been involved with so far?

Raepple: Signing up as a solver is a very easy process. You have to go to the InnoCentive web site, which is www.InnoCentive.com, and you can sign up for a free account as a solver. That gives you the opportunity to look at the details of challenges on the InnoCentive marketplace and to look at the detailed description of these challenges. What happens if you take a look at these details is you open a so-called "project room" for that challenge. That project room is a private collaboration space between you, the solver, and the seeker.

For example, if you go to the SAP Pavilion on the InnoCentive home page and you are interested, for example, in one of the challenges that SAP posted, you would click on the "Details" link. If you are not registered so far, you should register with your solver account, and then a project room is open for you on that challenge: you can get access to the details of that challenge and actually submit a solution later on to this challenge.

The type of challenges that SAP posted so far are on a variety of topics. For example, one of the first challenges we posted was ideas for a new SDN member video to attract new members for the SDN communities. Another one asks how to apply the concept of social networking to Enterprise Applications. So there are a variety of different topics addressed by SAP to the solver community, and I think it's a great way to demonstrate our knowledge in SAP technology.

Reed: Here's the really interesting part: some of the benefits of being a solver. Can you tell us about some of those on InnoCentive for SDN members?

Raepple: First of all, every challenge that is posted on the InnoCentive marketplace is associated with a prize award. You, as the individual solver, can earn the prize money attached to this challenge once you have won the challenge. The prize award is in the range of a minimum of $5,000 and can go up to even $1,000,000. The current challenges that we've posted in the SAP Pavilion have a total sum of $55,000 at the current point in time, so I think that's a great benefit to every solver.

On top of that, as an incentive, every SDN member that submits a solution to one of the challenges posted in the SAP Pavilion can earn SDN points for that submission. If you submit a solution to one of the challenges in the SAP Pavilion you earn 50 SDN points, and if you win that challenge you earn 150 points for that. All you have to do to achieve that is enter your SDN user ID in your solver profile on the InnoCentive page. There's an entry field on your profile management page, so once you register and sign in, you get access to managing your profile on the InnoCentive marketplace. There's a field where you can enter your SDN member ID, and that allows us on the SDN side to assign the points to you once you have submitted a solution or, as I said, won a challenge.

Reed: Excellent. Let's take a look at the seeker role. Bob, during our call last week when we discussed the podcast taping, we were talking about how InnoCentive can help companies innovate during a time when many traditional research and development projects have been either put on hold for budgetary reasons or scaled back. How can InnoCentive be a resource for companies that are committed to innovation but seeking cost-effective approaches?