Putting Innovation and Tech to Work Against Breast Cancer

In April, Jeff Hammerbacher looked around Silicon Valley and made an observation to Businessweek that spread like wildfire: "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads," he said. "That sucks."

With the launch of General Electric's Healthymagination Cancer Challenge, the best and brightest technical minds have been called to work on something that matters: fight breast cancer.

The open innovation challenge was launched yesterday in New York City. GE and a number of venture capitalists are putting $100 million behind the challenge as part of GE's larger billion-dollar commitment to fund cancer-related R&D over the next five years.