Paris, 16 October 2009 – 8:00 am

hypios, a platform in which “Solvers” — academics or experts in a given field — resolve complex problems for “Seekers” — typically large enterprises — announced its first successful solution with an award ceremony at Paris headquarters.

This milestone was particularly significant because the resolved problem was the company’s own: developing an algorithm capable of identifying potential Solvers for a submitted problem. The equation had to account for various disciplines and domains, including those beyond the industry of origin.

“We’re celebrating not only an elegant and unexpected solution to a thorny problem, but the demonstrated effectiveness of the platform,” explained Chief Scientific Officer Simone De Liberato.

The presentation was followed by a champagne toast and enthusiastic applause from the staff of “hypsters” — hypios employees.

The challenge was posted to hypios’ site in June 2009. Xavier Gréhant, a PhD student at a Paris technical school whose research focuses on distributed computing, was awarded a check of $3112.50, or roughly 2000€, for his problem-suggestion algorithm based on correlations between solvers.

“What was so striking about Gréhant’s solution was that it made me conceive of the problem differently,” De Liberato continued. “The solution was so much simpler than we imagined, and Gréhant found it because he was able to re-imagine the problem by drawing on his specific research background.”

hypios hopes to be able to replicate this experience for its clients.

“This particular challenge and its solution are a kind of poster child for us at hypios,” said co-founder Klaus-Peter Speidel.  “The problem that we posted was solved by someone from an unexpected background who offered a new approach. We are convinced that Gréhant’s algorithm will help hypios reproduce this phenomenon as we source solutions on our site.”

“As hypios’ Solver network grows to encompass hundreds of thousands of solvers and the volume of problems the site handles increases, identifying the right Solvers and pushing problems to them automatically will become mission-critical,” added Co-Founder/Vice President Jérémie Bertrand of hypios.

In fall 2009 hypios plans to roll out a series of external problems from seekers in a diversity industries. “We really wanted to thoroughly test both the platform, the processes and the business concept before offering it to our clients. That way we could have the experience as solution-seekers ourselves,” concluded Oussama Ammar, hypios president and founder.

Watch a video interview featuring Xavier Gréhant, who discusses the solution he formulated for hypios.

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Hypios combines intelligent crowdsourcing, competency discovery technology, and human outreach to deliver an optimal open problem-solving service. “Seekers” post R&D problems to the network and select a deadline and a price for the successful “Solver.” Hypios, which draws from a network of 950,000 experts across the world, has been solving R&D problems for global companies since 2008.

Press Contact

Hypios
Saman Musacchio
smusacchio(at)hypios(dot)com
Tel+33 1 77 13 67 79

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