Monday, February 6, 2012

InnoCentive buys OmniCompete for innovation challenges

By Michelle Lang

InnoCentive Inc., a Waltham developer of an incentive platform technology, has acquired OmniCompete Ltd., a U.K.-based provider of innovation competitions in the areas of security, energy, healthcare and cloud computing. The acquisition means that InnoCentive will have a London office as its headquarters for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) operations.

InnoCentive develops Grand Challenges, including the Prize4Life Challenge and the Life Grand Challenges, based on a crowd-sourcing model designed to drive innovation.

The newly acquired company was founded in 2005 and incubated at the London Business School. Since 2006, OmniCompete has run its Global Security Challenge, a $500,000 competition for security startups and SMEs with the sole goal of furthering innovation. Through all of its challenges to date, the company has awarded about $3 million in prizes.

As part of the acquisition deal, for which the financial terms were not disclosed, OmniCompete CEO and co-founder Simon Schneider will take on the vice president role at InnoCentive, leading the London office and the Grand Challenges Division.

In November, InnoCentive brought in another tranche of a funding round that bumped up to $5.13 million, from an earlier $3.4 million financing. 

In August 2009, InnoCentive raised $7.3 million in new equity financing, adding about 50 new angel investors in an extension to a Series B round of funding.