Open Innovation Contest Winners Awarded Big Money Prizes
General Electric (GE) and partners have just announced the winners of its first two ‘Industrial Internet Quests’. – The Flight Quest and the Hospital Quest. These were open innovation challenges issued in November 2012 to create new algorithms to reduce air travel delays and increase efficiency for hospitals.
A total prize pool of $600,000 is being distributed among the winners of both quests.
Developers and data scientists from 58 countries submitted more than 3,000 ideas.
For the Flight Quest, GE, Kaggle, and Alaska Airlines gave participants a two-month set of flight data from the National Airspace System of the United States, including origin, destination, and flight number data, weather and wind information.
Their challenge was to build a model to increase flight efficiency. The airline industry currently estimates that during any given flight travel time, fuel use, and flying path are 18 to 22 percent inefficient.
For the Hospital Quest, GE and Ochsner Health System looked for solutions that would a) improve the overall hospital experience for patients and families and b) trim some of the estimated $750 billion to $1.2 trillion that goes to waste annually in the U.S. healthcare industry.
Information on the contest winners can be found here.
Open Platform for New Ideas
The quests are part of a broader to effort to create a dynamic online community and open platform where industrial Internet solutions can be developed.
Bill Ruh, vice president of GE’s Software and Analytics Center said:
“The winners have shown that an open platform, such as these Quests, does spur innovation and new ideas, and we are excited about continuing to work with them to integrate their innovations into GE solutions.”
Phase two of the Flight Quest is already underway.
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