> What is a social Marketplace for Solutions & who is going to use it?

This introduces hypios and explains how and why it works. Start here if you're wondering what is a marketplace for solutions, who uses it, or who works at hypios.

> hypios is the first social marketplace for problem solving, i.e. a website where companies can post problems they have to a global community of problem solvers, organized in a social network. Though the site's name was inspired by a legendary river of knowledge, the company's founders are far from living in a fairytale. As alumni of some of the most prestigious American and European universities, hypios' founders have very clear ideas of how to achieve their goal of becoming the universal marketplace for problem solving. After only six months online, they've already convinced over 50,000 qualified problem solvers (over 50% hold Ph.Ds) to sign up for the site and compete to offer “the right solution”.

The right solution is what hypios calls the winning solution, the solution that complies with the criteria specified by a company seeking to get a problem solved or else one that the company finds useful - there are all kinds of serendipitous solutions that don't look exactly like what you expected. hypios was conceived as a secure bridge between seeker companies and problem solvers, guaranteeing that whoever finds the right solution gets the award that had been offered, and that the company doesn't have to pay if there is no solution; hypios operates on a success-only basis.

This is only one of the many ways in which hypios hopes to revolutionize the process of problem solving. Another element on which co-founder Klaus-Peter Speidel likes to insist is that hypios is not about reputation: “It's just about having the right solution for a specific problem”. Whereas recruiting problem solvers is usually based on credentials, hypios will not exclude anyone according to their background, education, or history as a problem solver. Everyone can join free of charge and submit solutions to the problems posted on hypios.

“There is a study that shows that companies having trouble finding a solution to a problem might be better off looking for expertise outside their sector, i.e. from people that are peripheral to the field in which the problem occurs, even though this seems counterintuitive”, says Anthony DeFilippo, President of hypios Inc. This doesn't imply that expertise is irrelevant. It simply means that some challenging problems are better tackled by people with expertise in another sector. It's unclear how this observation could be applied to the traditional recruitment process. Knowing how costly it can be to hire someone, companies are right to stick with their field's experts instead of using outsider talent. For one thing, companies know what competencies to look for when they're hiring, but how could they know what kind of “outsider” competency they need to solve a problem that has got their insiders stumped? Though some problems in computer science could be solved by a neuroscientist, others might need the skills of a statistician.

This is where hypios comes in. By submitting problems to hypios, companies avoid the risk of randomly recruiting outsiders while assuring their problems both wide exposure and a clear structure for reception and dealing with copyright issues. Upon reading a problem description on hypios, outsiders who actually have the ability to work out a solution can send it in. Because companies only pay if they find a solution, they don't run the risk of hiring someone whose credentials only sound good, but who can't actually solve their problem.