Innovation Exchange
 | |
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Open innovation services |
| Founded | 2006 |
| Headquarters | |
Key people | Brynly Hawkins - COO |
| Website | www |
Innovation Exchange Inc. (IX) is an open innovation vendor. IX operates a website which acts as a platform for companies and non-profit organizations to present innovation challenges to a community of innovators. This community is constituted of individuals as well as small and midsize businesses. In contrast to vendors focused primarily on innovation in the physical sciences, Innovation Exchange fosters product, service, process and business model development.[1][2][3][4]
Illegal activity
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On 3/January/2015 company's executives sent a group email mentioning: "It is with regret that this email is to inform you that Innovation Exchange, Inc is now dormant and insolvent. It has been established that there are no viable assets with any value which could be sold and therefore no money to distribute" No name mentioned on the email.
Since then the company's website does not perform nor any of the phone numbers active. The company never asked for payments for any of the services upfront but only a certain amount of negotiable deposit (retainer) to be paid by the innovators as a guarantee for the contracts and now they claiming that they can not pay back the money received. Many of the innovators are not from Canada but are actively performing legal action to find the 3 main members of this scam. The primary culprit seems to be Mr. Brynly R. Hawkins
As mentioned by the Canadian police this company has never filed for bankruptcy which in that case the government of Canada would have helped the company owners to pay some of the outstanding debt so clearly this was just a scam and performed for a few years to gain public trust and managed to gather a significant sum of money. If you did interact with the company as a private entity and not a business, you can file a complaint through the Minister of Consumer Services; Consumer Protection Branch, Box 450 1201 Wilson Avenue Building A North York, ON M3M 1J8 Canada. Mr Hawkins' Business Identification number is 200901189. There are very hefty fines for misleading practices and what they did wholly is covered. The Consumer Protection Branch will go after Mr Hawkins on your behalf, even if you are not Canadian. Unfortunately, I am an LLC so pursuit has to be through the Courts.
The above mentioned Ministry of Consumer Services is of no use. All they did was try to contact the office by email and phone and then said they cant reach them. And then they would put the name of the company(not Brynly Hawkins) in the scam list.
Business Model
IX’s business model takes its inspiration from the work on open innovation and crowdsourcing performed by John Seely Brown (who sits on IX’s advisory board), John Hagel III, Henry Chesbrough, Wim Vanhaverbeke, Joel West and Scott E. Page. Open innovation is increasingly seen as a key mechanism for developing innovations.[5][6]
IX acts as an “innovation intermediary”, meaning that it functions to match organizations seeking innovative products, services, processes or business models (“sponsors”) with individuals and organizations offering such innovations (“innovators”).
The mechanism for this intermediation is a "challenge brief", a short document, typically three to five pages, which provides background information about the innovation being sought and enumerates the elements that a response must include. IX provides consulting services which aid client companies to understand the nature of the innovation being sought, and to articulate that innovation challenge to the community in the form of the challenge brief.
Competitors
Competitors offering similar services include NineSigma, MillionBrains, Fellowforce, Innocentive, IdeaConnection, Yet2.com, Inpama.com and YourEncore
References
- ^ A Better Moustrap Canadian Business Online, September 29, 2008. Retrieved 19 September 2008.[dead link]
- ^ Innovation Exchange = Crowdsourcing + Collaboration + Business Innovation Open Innovators.net, June 4, 2008. Retrieved 20 June 2008.
- ^ User Generated Intelligence...Innovation Exchange Passage Communications, May 20, 2008. Retrieved 20 June 2008.
- ^ What Low-Cost Innovation Techniques Should You Be Using RIGHT NOW?? Patty Seybold's Outside Innovation Blog, July 29, 2008.[dead link]
- ^ Big Firms Eye 'Open Innovation' for Ideas NPR.org, 27 May 2007. Retrieved 18 June 2008.
- ^ The Love-in Economist, 11 October 2007. Retrieved 18 June 2008.
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