The need for innovation is not unique to modern era. Smaller companies used to miss out on innovative solutions, as internal innovation development is prohibitively expensive for them. Modern era offers total connectedness and new avenues for innovation procurement across company boundaries, open innovations. Companies of all sizes have gained access to the global pool of innovative minds making innovation accessible to small companies. The change coincided with the advent of the era of Big Data and broadened awareness of untapped data value potential. For companies lacking internal expertise, one of the easiest ways to solve a given business problem is to sponsor an online programming contest. By sponsoring a contest, a company gains ability to innovate at a low cost, while revealing (i) internal innovation capacity limitations and (ii) information about potential solutions to the problem to its freeriding competitors. Despite these downsides, a number of financial institutions have sponsored programming competitions. We discuss problems solved by the financial industry through sponsoring programming contests. The democratization of access to innovation goes both ways. In addition to the already mentioned benefit to companies, data scientists benefit from increased exposure. A gifted data scientist with a computer and internet connection living in a small remote town can gain global recognition. Some more successful competitors living in developing countries can replace standard professional work by participation in programming competitions while maintaining a good quality of life and flexibility no regular job would offer.