PRESS RELEASE FROM NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
2 June 2009

Contact: Grace Baynes
Corporate Public Relations, Nature Publishing Group
T:+44 (0)20 7014 4063
g.baynes@nature.com

InnoCentive, Inc., the global open innovation marketplace, and Nature Publishing Group (NPG), a leading scientific and medical publisher, today announced the launch of the nature.com Open Innovation Pavilion. Jointly hosted on InnoCentive.com and nature.com, www.nature.com/openinnovation, the nature.com Open Innovation Pavilion provides a hub for scientific collaboration and open innovation.

Companies and not-for-profit organizations (known as 'Seekers') can post 'Challenges' in life sciences, physical sciences and clinical medicine on the nature.com Open Innovation Pavilion. These 'Challenges' are briefs allowing Seekers to tap into external expertise to solve research problems or drive development of new products and technologies. Successful Solvers receive financial rewards. Seekers can call on the expertise from nature.com's five million monthly visitors and InnoCentive's community of more than 175,000 Solvers.

The nature.com Open Innovation Pavilion provides the nature.com user community and InnoCentive's Solver community with a rich set of Challenges to tackle, specifically tailored to their interests and expertise. InnoCentive and NPG will work together to maximize the visibility of these Challenges to nature.com users, readers of NPG journals, and current InnoCentive Solvers. Nature.com users will be invited to become InnoCentive Solvers; a larger pool of expertise should increase the chances of solving issues of worldwide concern. Current InnoCentive clients will have the opportunity to post Challenges in the nature.com Pavilion, taking advantage of this new larger community of Solvers.

"Nature Publishing Group sees open innovation as an efficient way of handling the business of research. We're pleased to bring InnoCentive Challenges to users of nature.com," said Veronique Kiermer, Publisher, Methods, Protocols and Products at Nature Publishing Group. "Nature.com has a readership of millions of experts, in all fields of science and medicine. We hope that our community will take this opportunity to apply their practical knowledge to new problems. The financial rewards offered mean that researchers can personally benefit while helping to solve global challenges."

The nature.com Open Innovation Pavilion is already home to five Challenges, with a cumulative award amount of $100,000. There are more than 1,200 open Solver project rooms, with Solvers working to solve these Challenges. The Seeker of the newest Challenge is looking for an efficient chromosome doubling method in plants. Other Challenges include finding new end uses for cotton, and experimental ways to avoid condensation in highly charged, crosslinked hydrogels. The Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi) will be one of the first Seekers to post a Challenge on the Nature.com Open Innovation Pavilion.

"At DNDi we are delighted to partner with InnoCentive and Nature Publishing Group to put out a Challenge on global health and neglected tropical diseases," says Jean-Pierre Paccaud of DNDi. "By submitting a Challenge to the scientific community worldwide, we not only hope to swiftly obtain potential solutions to the problem, but also to draw its attention to the need to do more to find and develop treatments for these deadly diseases."

"This is more than just about NPG becoming involved in the crowdsourcing trend," said Steven Inchcoombe, Managing Director, Nature Publishing Group. "InnoCentive has a proven platform. Coupled with their training workshops and consultation services, InnoCentive is well placed to help organizations partner with the scientific community to solve problems. As part of our partnership, NPG hopes to be able to refer many more organizations to take advantage of these services."

InnoCentive built the first global Web community for open innovation, which enables scientists, engineers, professionals and entrepreneurs from around the world to deliver breakthrough solutions for innovative research and development companies. InnoCentive's Solver community is growing rapidly, numbering more than 175,000 Solvers from 175 countries. The partnership with NPG is projected to further expand this Solver base.

"We are excited about the opportunity that this partnership presents for both our Seeker and Solver communities" said Dwayne Spradlin, CEO of InnoCentive, Inc. "There is such like-mindedness between our experts and nature.com users that we expect Seekers to quickly realize the compounded benefit, meaning their Challenges, which are often related to issues of worldwide importance such as disease and resources, will be solved at a much greater speed."

The nature.com Open Innovation Pavilion is a key milestone in the partnership between NPG and InnoCentive, announced in March 2009.

-ENDS-

About Nature Publishing Group (NPG)

Nature Publishing Group (NPG) is a publisher of high impact scientific and medical information in print and online. NPG publishes journals, online databases and services across the life, physical, chemical and applied sciences and clinical medicine.

Focusing on the needs of scientists, Nature (founded in 1869) is the leading weekly, international scientific journal. In addition, for this audience, NPG publishes a range of Nature research journals and Nature Reviews journals, plus a range of prestigious academic journals including society-owned publications. Online, nature.com provides over 5 million visitors per month with access to NPG publications and online databases and services, including Nature News and Nature Jobs plus access to Nature Network and Nature Education's Scitable.com.

Scientific American is at the heart of NPG's newly-formed consumer media division, meeting the needs of the general public. Founded in 1845, Scientific American is the oldest continuously published magazine in the US and the leading authoritative publication for science in the general media. Together with scientificamerican.com and 16 local language editions around the world it reaches over 3 million consumers and scientists. Other titles include Scientific American Mind and Spektrum der Wissenschaft in Germany.

Throughout all its businesses NPG is dedicated to serving the scientific and medical communities and the wider scientifically interested general public. Part of Macmillan Publishers Limited, NPG is a global company with principal offices in London, New York and Tokyo, and offices in cities worldwide including Boston, Buenos Aires, Delhi, Hong Kong, Madrid, Barcelona, Munich, Heidelberg, Basingstoke, Melbourne, Paris, San Francisco, Seoul and Washington DC. For more information, please go to www.nature.com.

About InnoCentive

Founded in 2001, InnoCentive built the first global web community for open innovation, enabling scientists, engineers, professionals and entrepreneurs to collaborate to deliver breakthrough solutions for R&D-driven organizations. InnoCentive Seekers, who collectively spend billions of dollars on R&D, submit complex problems to the InnoCentive Marketplace where more than 175,000 engineers, scientists, inventors, business people, and research organizations in more than 175 countries are invited to solve them. Solvers who deliver the most innovative solutions receive financial awards ranging up to US$1,000,000. InnoCentive's Seekers include commercial, government and non-profit organizations such as Avery Dennison, SAP, Procter & Gamble, Pendulum, Eli Lilly and Company, Janssen, Solvay and The Rockefeller Foundation. For more information on InnoCentive, go to: www.innocentive.com/.
InnoCentive and InnoCentive Challenge are registered trademarks of InnoCentive, Inc. Other product or service names mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners.

For more information contact:
Connie French
InnoCentive Marketing Manager
978-482-3300
press@innocentive.com