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Poking around on the Internet four years ago, looking to earn a few dollars to make ends meet, Edward Melcarek found a way to put a foundering career as an electromechanical engineer to use solving the world's problems.

The Barrie, Ont., specialist in electronics, remote sensing, particle physics and manufacturing processes stumbled upon InnoCentive.com, a website that posts research challenges by companies willing to pay outsiders for answers.

Mr. Melcarek began putting his mind to all kinds of technical puzzles that had stumped R&D types in some major corporations in the global community, referred to on the site as "seekers."

From his workbench in a space above an auto-body shop on the north shore of Lake Simcoe, the quirky 58-year-old Polish Canadian now has a lucrative and interesting new life as an InnoCentive "solver."

So far, he has won three awards totalling $50,000 (U.S.) -- a record among North Americans on the site -- for coming up with methods to purify silicone-based solvents, to add fluoride powder to toothpaste tubes, and to control dust in the packaging of drywall powder.

"Not bad for a few minutes' work," says Mr. Melcarek, who likes to fish and bicycle when he's not tinkering on such challenges, which he calls a "full-time hobby."

Online forums such as InnoCentive.com., yet2.com and NineSigma.com marry far-flung scientists with corporations, foundations and non-profit organizations that have research conundrums. Along with a growing number of high-profile contests offering hefty prizes, they are prompting innovative solutions to -- and focusing attention on -- increasingly complex science and technology challenges.

A marketplace for ideas

"We can structurally change the way innovation works," says Dwayne Spradlin, president and CEO of InnoCentive Inc., in Andover, Mass.

"Dollars clearly help to focus the masses on solving problems, to go outside the four walls of monolithic organizations and get to a new level of R&D."

InnoCentive was started in 2001 as an independent business venture of pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly & Co. It focused first on the field of analytical chemistry, expanded into genetics, biochemistry and materials science and now promises to move into fields ranging from information technology to international development.

"Seekers" such as Procter & Gamble, Boeing, Pittsburgh Plate & Glass and the Rockefeller Foundation pay annual fees for access to InnoCentive's ad-hoc network of scientists in 125 countries. Some 120,000 of these "solvers" have registered on the site, Mr. Spradlin says, and another 1,000 to 2,000 sign up each month to take a shot at challenges that typically come with awards ranging from $10,000 to $100,000. A winning "solver" signs an agreement transferring the intellectual property for the solution to the "seeker," which have the option of remaining anonymous.

Mr. Spradlin says a vast range of products and processes have come from the "open innovation" made possible on the site. Though he cannot cite specific examples for confidentiality reasons, "I can almost guarantee that there's at least one product in every home that uses work that's been done across our network."

He expects that the types of challenges and amounts of awards will be elevated in the months to come -- for example, those underwritten by research foundations and philanthropists.

Indeed, one current InnoCentive challenge offered by Prize4Life, a non-profit group founded to accelerate research on Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's Disease, offers $1-million for a biomarker for measuring the disease's progression.

Such cash-for-innovation propositions are especially writ large at the X Prize Foundation, which is currently finalizing a contest with a purse of at least $10-million for the development of a commercially viable, environmentally friendly car that can travel at least 100 miles on a gallon of gas.

The private organization awarded its first $10-million X Prize in 2004 to a team of engineers who designed a commercial spacecraft. And the Archon X Prize for genomics, backed by Canadian diamond-mining magnate Stewart Blusson of British Columbia, will award $10-million to anyone who can demonstrate a quick and inexpensive way to sequence the human genome, by decoding the DNA of 100 people in 10 days.

"We are pioneering a method of spurring breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity," says Mark Goodstein, executive director of the Automotive X Prize for the foundation, based in Pasadena, Calif.

Think outside the boxMuch of the success of the X Prize lies in the massive exposure it gets, its quest for practical, "scaleable" solutions and its leveraging of prize funds to spur research by competitors.

In the spacecraft competition, for example, 26 teams spent $100-million of their own money on their projects, Mr. Goodstein says. Some 200 groups have expressed an intention to compete for the automotive prize, which has a deadline of 2009.

While such research prize philanthropy may be more visible and compelling in the age of the Internet, it's roots go back nearly 100 years. The original X Prize was modelled after the $25,000 Orteig Prize, offered by a wealthy hotel owner, which resulted in Charles Lindbergh's first non-stop flight between New York and Paris in 1927.

Prizes work in ways that conventional research doesn't, and they expand the range of those who might attempt solutions.

For example, a Harvard University study showed that the more removed an InnoCentive problem was from a "solver's" area of expertise, the more likely he or she was to crack it.

With many scientific conundrums, out-of-the-box thinking and diversity of knowledge win over specialization, says Mr. Melcarek.

He wasn't afraid to take some risks in his three winning InnoCentive submissions, plus another dozen or so he has worked on.

For example, he has proposed physics solutions to chemistry-related problems, such as using an electrostatic charge to get fluoride powder into a toothpaste tube, where chemists -- whom he calls "the test-tube guys" -- would more likely suggest an additive to make the powder heavier or stickier.

"In a corporate structure, most R&D people are very focused on a specific discipline," Mr. Melcarek explains. "The solutions that are obvious to a person like me would not be obvious to a person sitting in a white tower somewhere drawing 100K a year."

That's the kind of thinking behind the MaRS Discovery District in Toronto, which helps bring together scientific discoveries and move them into the marketplace, says chairman John Evans. "We're getting them to interact."

He says prize programs, moreover, focus on the practical application of science and technology research and offer recognition to those doing it. MaRS is administering the Premier's Summit Award in Medical Research, which offers a total of $5-million (Canadian) over five years to outstanding individual medical researchers in Ontario, with the first of the winners to be announced today. "Raising the public profile of research is very important," Dr. Evans says.

Mr. Spradlin says InnoCentive plans new models of innovation, such as incentive programs within companies to spark internal knowledge-sharing and collaboration tools and groupings on the website that allow "solvers" to work together.

For Mr. Melcarek, the money he has brought in solving corporate R&D problems is financing his own independent research, such as an automotive project that involves quantum mechanics.

"Little by little I'm going to complete it," he explains. "I consider myself quite fortunate."

Notable prizes

1927

Charles Lindbergh wins the $25,000 Orteig Prize, offered since 1919 by a wealthy hotel owner for the first non-stop flight between New York and Paris.

1947

While convalescing in a military hospital during the Second World War, tank commander Mikhail Kalashnikov enters a Soviet Army contest to design the ultimate submachine gun. Praised for its durability, affordability and ease of use, the AK-47 becomes the gun of choice for Red Army soldiers and countless other groups around the world.

2004

X Prize Foundation awards its first $10-million prize, to a team of engineers who designed a commercial spacecraft.