The Darwinator has been used to host hundreds of innovation tournaments. Our customers range from small companies and start-ups to large organizations with thousands of employees and billions of revenue. All of them share their desire to leverage technology to leverage the creativity of their employees. The Darwinator is also used in academic settings, helping researchers to define new research projects and teaching business students and executives how to master innovation. The following four examples illustrate our customer applications.

Case 1: Large Health System

A large health system with multiple hospitals and thousands of doctors used the Darwinator to create innovations related to clinical care coordination and patient experience. The health system used a corporate wide innovation tournament to engage its entire employee base – from doctors to transporters and from nurses to senior executives. The health system also ran focused tournaments within specific units / departments. The Darwinator was used to facilitate the idea submission and to crowdsource the best ideas

Case 2: R&D department of a Biotech company

The head of clinical development in a rapidly growing Biotech company wanted to direct the clinical development capacity to where it generated the most value. A group of 30 scientists was invited to submit new growth opportunities. A two day work-shop was used to train the team in innovation tournament methods. Prior to the work-shop, the scientists submitted hundreds of opportunities to the Darwinator and an independent expert panel quickly screened the opportunities using the Darwinator’s evaluation capability

Case 3: Start-up

A group of entrepreneurial students at a top US business school approached their professor with the idea to start a new venture. The professor challenged the students to not simply move ahead with the first best idea, but instead to create at least 50 competing ideas. The students used the Darwinator to collect the 50 ideas and to quickly gauge which ones should be evaluated more closely. Two months later, the team launched a successful healthcare venture.

Case 4: Business School Courses

Several business schools use the Darwinator at the beginning of their product development, entrepreneurship, or innovation classes. Students (undergraduate, MBA, or participants in executive education) submit ideas and vote on other students’ ideas. Course projects are formed on the ideas with the most votes and often lead to the development of student run ventures.