Netflix’s Cloud Contest: More Companies Should Follow Suit

March 30, 2013 Off By David
Object Storage

Grazed from InformationWeek.  Author: Joe Weinman.

Netflix recently announced the $100,000 Netflix Cloud Prize, dedicated to advancing cloud computing in 10 categories. (Disclosure: I am one of the prize judges.) Another InformationWeek article argued that Netflix is "ruining cloud computing" by focusing its innovation in a way the author, Joe Masters Emison, is concerned could "derail real IaaS competition." In my view, Netflix is free to select whichever partners they choose, and as far as the Netflix Cloud Prize is concerned, more companies should be looking to mimic its approach: leveraging the economics of contests, enhancing their own services and sharing core technology advances with everyone.

The fundamental philosophy underlying contests such as these is what U.C. Berkeley professor Henry Chesbrough terms open innovation. It’s open, not restricted to a company’s internal R&D staff, and it’s innovation, not merely the repetitive execution of standard processes…


Open innovation may not always be the right approach, of course. Some areas of the business require in-depth knowledge of company practices, processes and proprietary information to advance the technology. However, open innovation is an approach well-suited to one-time challenges that can range from grand, such as landing a robot on the moon, to specific, such as "calculation of the intrinsic maximum birefringence of molecules."…

Read more from the source @  http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/netflixs-cloud-contest-more-companies-sh/240151747