This Element is an excerpt from The Open Innovation Marketplace: Creating Value in the Challenge Driven Enterprise (9780132311830) by Alpheus Bingham and Dwayne Spradlin. Available in print and digital formats.

Open innovation: how NASA mastered a radically new approach to collaboration and problem-solving-and the lessons for your organization.

A radio frequency engineer from rural New Hampshire contributed the best solution to a public challenge issued by NASA's Space Life Sciences Directorate. As Aneesh Chopra, Federal CTO put it, his idea "blew away the others whose ideas were under consideration...[with] no complicated RFP, need for lobbyists, convoluted processes...just a smart person [who] was paid a modest $30,000 for his insight."

Alpheus Bingham, Ph.D., board member and cofounder of InnoCentive, has founded several open and networked organizations, including YourEncore, Coalesix, Maaguzi, Indigo Biosystems, Seriosity, and Chorus. A Visiting Scholar at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, he serves on the boards of Fast Track Systems and Collaborative Drug Discovery. He spent more than 25 years at Eli Lilly in R&D and related roles. Dwayne Spradlin, President/CEO of InnoCentive, led Hoover's Inc., was President/COO of Starcite, Inc., and directed PriceWaterhouseCoopers' E-Business and Emerging Technology practice.