Crowdsourcing Collaboration Celebrates “Outside the Box” Applications for Dow’s UCON™ Oil Soluble PAGs to Help Address Global Challenges

Building on its foundational excellence of science-driven innovation, Dow turned to the power of the crowd to spearhead new application development and potential markets for UCON™ oil-soluble polyalkylene glycols (oil-soluble PAGs).

Partnering with InnoCentive, the first of its kind Oil-Sol Challenge received more than 60 solutions from 43 countries.

The Challenge called for industry leaders to collaborate, innovate and problem solve to validate new applications or markets where UCON™ oil-soluble PAGs could offer clear advantages to help solve some of the world’s most pressing challenges. Two winners—Joel Martin and Dmitriy Tipikin—clearly stepped up to the challenge, identifying potential applications for addressing eye disease globally and for providing better environmental and sustainable standards for oil/gas/mining operations. Each was awarded $15,000 for their winning ideas.

“Polyalkylene glycol synthetic lubricants have been around for more than 50 years, but have never been compatible with hydrocarbon or mineral oils until recently,” said Lisa Inoue, Dow strategic marketing leader. “Our internal experts identified industrial and automotive lubricants as possible markets, but we looked to outside scientists and innovators to help us uncover other potential opportunities that can broaden the use of this important chemistry.”

The crowdsourcing method is gaining traction to enhance and increase the efficiency of developing new technologies where there is a need. For InnoCentive, working with Dow elevated the importance of global collaboration with scientists to broaden the scope of oil-soluble PAGs for the future.

“Collaborating with Dow from initial conversations through the end of the Challenge, it was clear Dow is serious about innovation and inclusion of innovators from around the world in the process of discovering creative and diverse solutions in an accelerated model of InnoCentive crowdsourcing,” said Steve Domeck, VP of US Commercial for InnoCentive. “Once again, the InnoCentive Challenge Driven Innovation™ methodology and Solver community delivered results allowing Dow to advance more quickly into new markets.”