FAST!! NTL Academic Article Graphic contest

Welcome to NTL Academic Article Graphic contest.
In this contest we are looking for 2 grahical illustrations design that will represent articles about The Integrated Innovation Funnel in Academic Medicine.
We are looking for a clean, and professional 3D graphical illustration for these 2 graphics.

Read the requirements carefully and ask any questions in the forum to clarify anything.

Contest Overview:
NTL team members have an article forthcoming on the use of open innovation practices within academic medical centers – with a focus on Harvard Medical School – in the Sloan Management Review. They would like to create two graphics that get across the essential points about how open innovation practices bring in new people across the entire academic medicine enterprise.

Primary Goal:
The goal of this contest is to design 2 graphics based on the reqirements below that wil be used to illustrate the article about The Integrated Innovation Funnel in Academic Medicine.
We also attach 2 designs as reference of something we are looking for. REMEMBER, this is only a reference, please DO NOT copy anything from the reference.

Design Requirement:
- GRAPHIC 1: The Integrated Innovation Funnel in Academic Medicine
The first graphic needs to address the “Integrated Innovation Funnel in Academic Medicine” concept.

Here is the relevant paragraph of the article that need to built up into the figure:
While the academic scientific process is more open than most commercial endeavors, it still follows the logic of a closed innovation funnel where few individuals determine the direction and execution of innovative efforts. A scientific team, typically led and assembled by a principal investigator (PI), first determines hypotheses to explore. These research questions and hypotheses are based on the training, education and expertise of the PI and his or her collaborators. The direction of research is also conditioned by the priorities set by their peers through specialist meetings and calls for funding proposals. Peer-review panels then evaluate if a proposal is responsive to the funder’s request and suitable for funding. The research team conducts the experimental work and, depending on the quality and significance of the results, sends out the results for another peer review in hopes of publishing the results. Hence, while the outputs of academic science are open, the inputs and the process are closed and limited to experts within a field. This results in a fully integrated innovation funnel where all steps in the research process are accomplished by the research team.

- The essential elements to show is that the ideas/hypotheses into the funnel get generated from a small team – then a small set of experts selects the ideas for funding – and if funded – the same small team that generated the idea executes on the idea.
- Please note, the important thing is it shows generation, selection, and execution phases.
- Feel free to include any ideas you have to illustrate the paragraph into an interesting graphic. No restriction.

- GRAPHIC 2: The Disaggregated Innovation Funnel
The second graphic should take the first graphic and create a disaggregation of the phases so that it shows that with open innovation – you can:
1 – have many more people generate hypotheses – not necessarily in the field of the problem
2 – have many more people select ideas – inside and outside the field of the problem
3 – have people execute on the ideas that did not necessarily come from the people who generated the ideas – and may not be from the same field of the problem

Here is the relevant paragraph of the article that need to built up into the figure:
The core insight driving Harvard Catalyst’s experiments was that all stages of the previously narrow and fully integrated innovation funnel—hypothesis generation to idea selection to execution—can be disaggregated, separated and opened to outside input. By opening up participation to non-traditional actors, Catalyst achieved its objectives of bringing in truly novel perspectives, ideas and people into an established area of research.
Each step of the now disaggregated innovation funnel had to be actively managed by Catalyst leadership so that the natural tendency of the organization to rely on pre-existing field-based experts did not lead to premature closure. At each stage of the process, Catalyst leaders had to first make sure that the process was open and that the output of one open stage led to another open stage:
- While generating research hypotheses from diverse actors may have been interesting in its own right, making sure that the most interesting and novel ideas got selected for further pursuit required the leadership to open up the evaluation process to more diverse reviewers.
- Selecting innovative ideas for further research had to be married with an outreach program that would encourage scholars who were not necessarily diabetes experts to consider applying their own expertise to the newly formed research proposal areas.
Along the way, the temptation to resort to the traditional narrow and well understood closed phases was quite high, as being open required more work and explanation to a large set of stakeholders.
Somewhat unexpectedly, Catalyst discovered that while academic researchers tend to be very specialized and focused on extremely narrow fields of interest, explicit outreach to individuals with peripheral links to a knowledge domain can engage the intellectual passions of individuals not normally associated with the a particular field. Catalyst uncovered a dormant demand for cross-disciplinary work, which many leaders within Catalyst doubted was possible. However, as soon as bridges were built, individuals and teams started to cross over. The lesson for managers outside of academic medicine is that there may be sufficient talent, knowledge and passion for highly impactful breakthrough work, currently inside their organizations, but trapped in functional or product silos. By creating the incentives and infrastructure that enable and encourage bridge crossing, managers can unlock this talent.

Branding Guidelines:
- Size: 600 x 400 px and saved in 150 dpi resolution.
- Fonts: Open to the designer
- Colors: Open to the designer

Target Audience:
- Business executives

Judging Criteria:
- Clarity on the design. How easy is the graphic to understand?
- Quality of the design
- How well the graphic illustrate the articles and the requirements above

Submission & Source Files
Preview Image
Please create your preview image as one (1) 1024x768 JPG or PNG file in RGB color mode at 72dpi and place a screenshot of your submission within it. You are free to resize or crop your submission to fit this size, but do not add any filters or elements for dramatic effect, such as drop shadows or reflections.

Submission File
Submit JPG/PNG images of all requested contest submission requirements stated above. Keep your source files out from this submission folder.

Source Files
All original source files. Original source files should be saved as layered vector illustrator files and saved in CMYK color mode .

Final Fixes
As part of the final fixes phase you may be asked to modify your graphics (sizes or colors) or modify overall colors.