InnoCentive Inc. in Waltham, Massachusetts, a provider of open-innovation and crowdsourcing competitions, says it has acquired OmniCompete Limited based in London, U.K. that also conducts challenge contests. No financial terms were disclosed.
InnoCentive says it plans to adds OmniComplete’s experience in big-ticket competitions to InnoCentive’s so-called Grand Challenges, contests with larger payouts. Among the larger prizes offered by InnoCentive are the challenges sponsored by Life Technologies in the field of genomics, with a total prize package of $7 million. A separate Prize4Life challenge offers a $1 million prize for biomarkers to measure the progression of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), sometimes called Lou Gehrig’s disease.
OmniComplete started as a spin-off from the London School of Economics in 2005. Including current challenges, the company has hosted some 22 international competitions in the areas of security, energy, water, health, and cloud computing with nearly $3 million in prizes.
OmniComplete’s largest offering is the Global Security Challenge — which was the company’s original name — that seeks to generate new technologies and ideas in the security field. The 2011 challenge awarded prizes in two categories — start-ups and established small businesses — with awards totaling $500,000. Unlike other challenges, participants in the challenge are not required to share intellectual property rights with the sponsor.
InnoCentive says the OmniComplete office in London will continue operating as before, including the maintenance of current staff, and will honor ongoing OmniComplete contracts.
Read more:$1M Challenge Aims to Monitor DNA/RNA Sequencing of a Cell
Photo: TaxBrackets.org/Flickr
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