Innocentive and Foldit

If You Have a Problem, Ask Everyone - New York Times (link from X PRIZE Foundation) - This article describes the trend towards "crowd sourcing" with companies like Innocentive in the technology prize matchmaking business. That's a big focus of the article, but it also covers innovation prize competitions like the ones usually covered here and related changes.

One that I haven't heard of before is Foldit, which seems like a mixture of protein folding science, computer game competition, and mass volunteer Internet effort like SETI at Home, Einstein at Home, Proteins at Home, Rosetta at Home, and the others at BOINC.

Here are a couple blog posts on the NYT piece:

Participatory Learning: If you have a problem, ask everybody! - HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory)

Using Crowds to Solve Problems - Sufficiently Advanced