inome CEO Naveen Jain Fosters Innovation and Entrepreneurship With Second Annual iPrize Challenge

inome, whose mission is to analyze the world’s information and make it person-centric, is proud to announce that Elisabeth DeVos is the grand-prize winner of its second annual iPrize Challenge. For the second year in a row, inome is awarding incentivized innovation prizes of $100,000 total to the employees who submit the best three innovative ideas, judged by a panel of inome executives. This year’s iPrize Challenge generated 137 innovative, potentially breakthrough ideas, a 69 percent increase from the previous year.

“It should come as no surprise that innovators exist at every level in every company. The key is to hire entrepreneurs and identify ways to empower them by promoting their innovative spirits. This creates the disruptive ideas that will bring companies to the next level,” said Naveen Jain, CEO, inome. “inome’s iPrize Challenge, which awards a cash bonus, is just one of the many ways of tapping into employees to foster innovation.”

This year’s grand-prize winner Elisabeth DeVos, who is also the author of a full-length science fiction novel, envisioned a gaming and networking application based on the well-known principle that there are six degrees of separation between any two people in the world. Based on the inome platform, Six Degrees will enable consumers to discover the chain of connections they share with others. This engaging application idea highlights the power and impressive scale of the inome platform.

“It is great to work for a company that recognizes and seeks out the innovative ideas of all of its employees,” said DeVos, Marketing Communications Manager, inome. “I can think of no better way of driving innovation than through an entrepreneurial approach; in this case, through incentivized prizing. The inome iPrize Challenge has given me an opportunity to show my peers, my supervisors and now the world, that innovation can be driven by anyone.”

inome is shorthand for the Information Genome, which uses information to create a comprehensive understanding of individuals and their relationships. Just like the human genome contains genetic information that’s unique to the individual, so too, does the information that exists about each individual. Six Degrees is just one of the myriad possibilities that can use the inome platform to create powerful and engaging applications.

Last year’s winner, Ji Kim, created rEngine, a real-time decision engine that evaluates scenario and consumer behavior to improve the consumer experience. This grand-prize winning idea has been implemented and is currently running in www.ussearch.com. Rep’t was another 2011 iPrize idea from Ian Dinsmore that earned a winning spot last year. Once fully developed, Rep’t will be released in the form of a mobile app that enables consumers to build a reputation or credibility score through recommendations.

Jain sits on the X Prize Foundation’s board of directors and decided to launch the iPrize Challenge last year after he saw firsthand, the tremendous, revolutionary ideas the Foundation is able to generate through a similar prizing system. Some of the most forward-thinking executives and politicians are using incentivized prizing to support the next breakout idea, but the practice of using incentivized prizing to enrich a company from within is relatively new. By taking the concept in house, Jain is finding and nurturing the best talent at inome, giving employees an additional opportunity to innovate from within.

inome held a special event on the evening of June 28 to award this year’s iPrize winners and congratulate its employees for submitting another round of standout ideas.

ABOUT INOME

inome has developed a set of proprietary technologies that has the potential to disrupt many industries by organizing and analyzing the world’s information, and making it person-centric. inome is built on the concept that information is the new biology in today’s connected economy. Much like our human biology consists of unique strands of DNA that combine to create our physical genome, the Information Genome is comprised of all the information that exists about each individual. inome analyzes information to create a comprehensive understanding of individuals and their relationships. Applications written for the inome platform are helping people connect with each other, make informed choices and control their digital footprint. To learn more about inome visit www.inome.com