New Processes to Manufacture Food Sought in Challenge

(Jarmoluk, Pixabay)

27 March 2015.  Sponsors of a new challenge on InnoCentive are seeking new manufacturing processes for making food and snacks. The competition has a total prize purse of $10,000 and a deadline of 23 April 2015 for submissions.

InnoCentive in Waltham, Massachusetts conducts open-innovation, crowdsourcing competitions for corporate and organization sponsors. The sponsor, in this case, is not disclosed. Innocentive calls this type of competition an ideation challenge that requires a brief written proposal. Free registration is required to see details of the competition.

The sponsor of this challenge is looking for novel techniques for creating and manufacturing food and snacks. One approach to this problem is to design methods for adjusting properties of food products, such as color, texture, and flavor. By offering methods for controlling these properties, food companies would be able to better control ingredients in food products, and thus enhance their flavors, or even create entirely new kinds of food or snacks.

Because of the desire for new methods and processes, the sponsor is eager to attract entrants to the challenge from outside the traditional food and beverage industry, with ideas on manufacturing processes for controlling and adjusting food properties. Competitors working in paints, inks, bulk and fine chemicals, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, aerospace, or electronics are invited to submit entries.

This ideation challenge requires a brief (two-page) proposal. Ideation proposals can contain ideas originating from the participants, ideas from the public domain where no restrictions are applied, or ideas from third-parties where participants have the rights to propose solutions with those ideas. Participants are asked not to submit confidential information in their proposals.

The competition has a total prize fund of $10,000, with at least one award no smaller than $5,000 and no award smaller than $2,000. The sponsor guarantees at least one prize will be awarded. The sponsor also indicates that submitting a proposal grants the sponsor a non-exclusive, perpetual, and royalty-free license to use any information in the proposal, including for promotional purposes. An exclusive transfer of intellectual property rights to the sponsor, however, is not required.

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