Open Innovation Challenges — Fully Managed, End-to-End, with Built-In IP Protection
Running an open innovation challenge requires more than a platform. It requires a defined problem statement, a curated solver community, a structured submission and evaluation process, airtight IP protections, and someone experienced enough to manage all of it without losing control of the engagement. Ezassi’s open innovation challenges service handles all of it — so your team focuses on evaluating strong solutions rather than managing the logistics of finding them. We design, host, and operate your challenge from brief through award, entirely on your behalf.
What Are Open Innovation Challenges?
Open innovation challenges are structured crowdsourcing engagements that bring external solvers — researchers, startups, subject matter experts, and independent innovators — to bear on a defined technical or business problem. Because the best solutions to hard problems often exist outside your organization’s walls, open challenges give your R&D team access to a global solver ecosystem without the overhead of building and maintaining that network internally.
Ezassi runs two types of challenges, depending on your strategic objective. Point solution challenges target a specific, well-defined technical problem and are optimized for speed — your team needs a qualified solution to a known gap, and you need it fast. Grand challenges are larger-scale, longer-horizon engagements that invite transformational approaches to a broader innovation question — the kind of problem where the best answer might come from a direction your internal team hasn’t considered.
In both cases, Ezassi operates the challenge on your behalf. Because our team has run challenges across pharma, manufacturing, defense, energy, and CPG, we bring the operational experience to anticipate and resolve the issues that derail first-time challenge organizers before they become program failures.
What Ezassi’s Open Innovation Challenges Service Includes
Technical Problem Definition and Brief Preparation
A challenge is only as good as its problem statement. So, before any solver engagement begins, our team works with your R&D and innovation leads to define the problem with precision — scope, success criteria, evaluation rubric, and the constraints solvers need to work within. Because an imprecise problem brief produces unfocused submissions that are expensive to evaluate and rarely actionable, this step is where we invest the most time upfront. As a result, every solver who enters your challenge is working toward the same clearly defined target.
Solver Community Curation and Outreach
Not every crowd is the right crowd. Ezassi’s technology discovery platform includes filtering capabilities purpose-built to identify and build the specific solver community your challenge needs — by domain expertise, credential type, geographic region, and institutional affiliation. Because we recruit solvers through structured outreach rather than open broadcasting, your challenge attracts qualified participants rather than a high volume of low-relevance submissions. The result is a smaller, higher-quality solver pool that produces evaluable solutions within your timeline.
Challenge Platform Setup and Hosting
Ezassi sets up, configures, and hosts your challenge on our open innovation platform — including submission workflow, evaluation scoring, collaboration tools, automated notifications, and the anonymization features your IP framework requires. Because your team runs the challenge on Ezassi’s platform without needing to license the software independently, there is no procurement cycle, no IT integration project, and no configuration overhead on your side. Learn more about the Ezassi open innovation management software that powers every challenge engagement.
IP Protection and NDA Facilitation
Intellectual property exposure is the concern that most often stalls open innovation programs before they launch. Ezassi’s challenge methodology uses a proprietary structured capture approach that provides bilateral IP protection for both your organization and every solver who participates. Because all client-generated information and all results produced within the engagement are the sole and exclusive property of your organization, your legal team has a clear ownership position from the first submission. Our team manages NDA facilitation and the IP framework as part of the standard engagement — not as a separate legal workstream.
End-to-End Challenge Management
Once the challenge launches, Ezassi’s team manages day-to-day operations — monitoring submissions, communicating with solvers, enforcing evaluation timelines, and escalating issues before they delay the process. Because our Chief Research Officer, Dave Jones, has over a decade of challenge management experience across Fortune 500 programs in life sciences, manufacturing, and defense, the operational decisions your challenge requires are made by someone who has navigated them before. Consequently, your internal team is freed to evaluate solutions rather than manage the engagement that produced them.
Submission Evaluation and Award Support
Finally, Ezassi supports the evaluation and award phase of your challenge — including scoring facilitation, evaluation committee coordination, and the final selection and award process. Because this phase is where most challenge programs lose momentum, our structured evaluation support keeps your team moving from submission to decision without the delays that cause solvers to disengage and internal stakeholders to lose confidence in the process.
How We Deliver Open Innovation Challenges
Step 1
Challenge Scoping and Brief Development
First, our team conducts a structured scoping session with your innovation and R&D leads to define the challenge objective, problem scope, solver eligibility criteria, evaluation rubric, and timeline. Because the brief is the foundation everything else depends on, we invest significant time here before any external engagement begins. Consequently, your challenge launches with a problem statement that produces focused, evaluable submissions rather than a broad range of loosely relevant ideas.
Step 2
Solver Community Build and Outreach
Next, we identify and recruit the specific solver community your challenge requires — drawing on Ezassi’s technology discovery platform to filter by domain expertise, credential, and institutional affiliation. Because solver outreach is targeted rather than broadcast, your challenge attracts participants who are positioned to produce relevant solutions. We also manage all outreach communications, NDA execution, and onboarding on your behalf.
Step 3
Challenge Launch and Active Management
Once the solver community is in place, we configure and launch your challenge on Ezassi’s platform and manage active operations through the submission window. This includes monitoring solver engagement, responding to clarification requests, enforcing submission protocols, and flagging any issues that require your team’s input. As a result, your internal team maintains oversight without carrying the operational load of a running challenge.
Step 4
Evaluation Facilitation and Award
Finally, we facilitate the evaluation process — organizing submissions, coordinating your evaluation committee, and supporting the scoring and selection process through to award. Because clear evaluation structure prevents the scoring drift and committee disagreement that delay most challenge closings, our facilitation keeps your team moving to a decision on the timeline your program requires. To see how this process has produced results in practice, explore our innovation software case studies.
Who Benefits from Open Innovation Challenges
R&D Leaders with Specific Technical Gaps to Fill
Innovation Leaders Running Grand Challenges
For innovation leaders pursuing transformational-scale problems — sustainability mandates, platform technology shifts, or open questions at the intersection of multiple technology domains — Ezassi’s grand challenge model provides the structure and operational experience to run a high-complexity engagement without the risk of an unmanaged open call. Because we have run challenges for organizations including the National Institute of Standards and Technology and Fortune 500 defense and technology firms, your team benefits from operational precedent across the most demanding challenge formats.
Innovation Teams Without Internal Challenge Infrastructure
Similarly, innovation teams that want the outcomes of an open challenge without building the infrastructure to run one independently are the core audience for Ezassi’s fully managed service. Because your team accesses Ezassi’s platform, solver network, IP framework, and challenge operations without licensing software or staffing an internal challenge management function, the barrier to running your first engagement is a scoping call, not a procurement cycle. For teams building toward a sustained open innovation program, Ezassi’s innovation program management services extend the challenge relationship into ongoing program operations.
To understand how open innovation challenges fit within Ezassi’s full suite of research and program services, explore our innovation research services overview.
Why Choose Ezassi for Open Innovation Challenges?
Proven Challenge Results Across Complex Programs
A Fortune 500 technology consulting firm ran an Ezassi-managed cybersecurity challenge that attracted 250 qualified solvers and received 147 top-secret clearance submissions — tripling their expected response volume within three weeks. The Public Safety Communications Research Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology used Ezassi’s platform to run a Challenge.gov competition advancing wireless data technologies for uncrewed aircraft systems. These results were produced by challenge design and operational discipline, not platform features alone. Explore more in our innovation software case studies.
Bilateral IP Protection Built Into Every Engagement
Most crowdsourcing platforms leave IP protection to the client’s legal team. Ezassi builds it into the challenge methodology. Because our structured capture approach provides bilateral IP protections for both your organization and every solver who participates, your legal team has a clear, defensible ownership position from the first submission — without a separate legal workstream. All client-generated information and all results produced within the engagement remain the sole and exclusive property of your organization.
The Right Crowd, Not the Biggest Crowd
Ezassi’s solver community is built through targeted recruitment, not open broadcasting. Because our technology discovery platform filters by domain expertise, credential type, and institutional affiliation, your challenge attracts the qualified participants your problem requires — not the largest number of loosely relevant respondents. As a result, your evaluation team spends less time screening and more time selecting.
Dave Jones — Decade of Challenge Management Experience
Ezassi’s open innovation challenges are managed by Dave Jones, Chief Research Officer, who has over a decade of challenge and program management experience across Fortune 500 companies in life sciences, manufacturing, and defense. Because Dave has run every phase of the challenge lifecycle — problem definition, NDA facilitation, solver outreach, evaluation, and award — the operational decisions your engagement requires are made by someone who has navigated them many times before.
Confidential by Design
Every Ezassi challenge operates under strict confidentiality. Your problem statement, strategic context, and all solver submissions stay fully protected throughout the engagement. Learn more about our confidentiality commitment.