This Element is an excerpt from The Open Innovation Marketplace: Creating Value in the Challenge Driven Enterprise (9780132311830) by Alpheus Bingham and Dwayne Spradlin. Available in print and digital formats.

Open innovation: how NASA mastered a radically new approach to collaboration and problem-solving—and the lessons for your organization.

A radio frequency engineer from rural New Hampshire contributed the best solution to a public challenge issued by NASA’s Space Life Sciences Directorate. As Aneesh Chopra, Federal CTO put it, his idea “blew away the others whose ideas were under consideration...[with] no complicated RFP, need for lobbyists, convoluted processes...just a smart person [who] was paid a modest $30,000 for his insight.”