OmniCompete is an organisation specialising in the design and implementation of

innovation competition An innovation competition is a method or process of the industrial process, product or business development. It is a form of social engineering, which focuses to the creation and elaboration of the best and sustainable ideas, coming from the best i ...

s. In February 2012 OmniCompete was acquired by InnoCentive. One of the original founders went on to co-found the crowdsharing platform Zyncd in 2014.

OmniCompete

OmniCompete is an organisation specialising in the design and implementation of

s. It promotes

Open Innovation Open innovation is a term used to promote an information age mindset toward innovation that runs counter to the secrecy and silo mentality of traditional corporate research labs. The benefits and driving forces behind increased openness have bee ...

through various prize challenges worldwide, offering financial rewards to successful innovators from across a diverse range of industries and sectors. Previous and ongoing competitions include the

Global Security Challenge The Global Security Challenge runs international business plan competitions to find and select the most promising security technology startups in the world. The GSC holds regional selection events and a Security Summit in London to bring together ...

, the Energy Storage Challenge, the Cyber Security Challenge and the Health Pitch Battlefield.

History

The idea behind OmniCompete and its predecessor company,

(GSC) was developed at

London Business School London Business School (LBS) is a business school and a constituent college of the federal University of London. LBS was founded in 1964 and awards post-graduate degrees (Master's degrees in management and finance, MBA and PhD). Its motto is " ...

in 2005, where the founders met during their MBAs. Simon Schneider and Janeen Chupa-Brimacombe founded the Global Security Challenge in 2006 and the competition has run annually since then. Building on this foundation in the security sector, the organisation has expanded into other areas, initiating the Energy Storage Challenge and Health Division in 2010. The umbrella company, OmniCompete Limited, was founded in 2010 and US subsidiary OmniCompete Inc. was incorporated in 2011. In 2012, OmniCompete was acquired by InnoCentive.

Company

OmniCompete is based in

London, UK London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a major se ...

. Its board members include the honourable H. Lee Buchanan III, who used to be Deputy Director of

DARPA The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the Adv ...

before his current role as VC at Paladin Capital Group. OmniCompete has hosted over 20 international competitions in the areas of

security Security is protection from, or resilience against, potential harm (or other unwanted coercive change) caused by others, by restraining the freedom of others to act. Beneficiaries (technically referents) of security may be of persons and social ...

energy In physics, energy (from Ancient Greek: ἐνέργεια, ''enérgeia'', “activity”) is the quantitative property that is transferred to a body or to a physical system, recognizable in the performance of work and in the form of heat a ...

social innovation Social innovations are new social practices that aim to meet social needs in a better way than the existing solutions,Howaldt, J./ Schwarz, M"Social Innovation: Concepts, research fields and international trends" IMO international monitoring, 2010 ...

and

cloud computing Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage ( cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Large clouds often have functions distributed over mul ...

, with over $2.9 million in prizes.

Winners and Finalists

Over the past five years, OmniCompete has awarded many prizes to a wide range of innovative startups and SMEs. Previous winners include: * Australian SME iwebgate who received the 2010 Best Security SME Prize ($300,000 prize fund) for the development of an online security product which represents a virtual, highly-secure reception area between an organisations' trusted network and volatile public networks like the Internet. * Ghanaian startup mPedigree won the Best Security Startup 2010 award - for developing the first system in the world which enables consumers and patients to verify the authenticity of their medicines by sending a free text message of the unique, product-embossed codes. * Kromek who won Best Security SME 2009 for developing a threat liquid identification system (bottle scanner) which can deal with individual containers and also a unit for screening multiple containers in a 311 bag configuration. * Ksplice, who won the 2009 Cyber Security Challenge for developing software that improves security, reliability and maintainability through seamless updates. Ksplice was recently acquired by Oracle. Winners and finalists have often secured investments and acquisition deals through their participation in OmniCompete competitions. Former Global Security Challenge finalist TenCube was recently acquired by McAfee. Vumii, Secerno and DecaWave provide more examples of finalists who have since raised significant funding.

References

{{Reflist

External links

* OmniCompet

* Global Security Challeng

* Energy Storage Challeng

* http://www.omnicompete.com/pitchlive.html Open innovation intermediaries Defunct companies based in London