IdeaConnection Innovation
BLOG

Crowdsourcing Help for the Smithsonian’s Collections

Nov-15-13 By IdeaConnection
The US Herbarium at the Natural History Museum’s Botany Department needs your help in a colossal digitization projection.

There are approximately 5 million plant specimens within its collections, but the labels of most of them cannot be read by computers. This is where you can come in to help make the materials, documents and knowledge more widely available to researchers and members of the public.

Polar Bear Researchers Experiment with Crowdsourcing

Nov-11-13 By IdeaConnection
Crowdsourcing is leading to the involvement of ever greater numbers of citizen scientists in scientific research. One of the latest projects to pull in the enthusiastic amateurs is a scheme to track polar bear migration.

Scientists from Polar Bears International and Explore.org are studying the effects of climate change on polar bears and want to see if the crowd can successfully help them in their research.

Why Innovation Success Needs Failure

Nov-08-13 By IdeaConnection
Many organisations have a very uneasy relationship with failure. It simply isn’t acceptable.  Employees from the CEO down are scared of the word and its consequences, so much so that conservatism rules the day.  In such an environment disruptive innovations are choked off long before an original thought is given room to breathe.

In a post on the Ventureburn website titled 'Failure isn't just good, it allows for extraordinary innovation' Mbali Ndandani says, “When organisations don’t allow their employees to fail, they are paying lip service to innovation. It really is that simple.”

Ndandani goes on to point out the famous example of Thomas Edison’s 1, 093 failures before he developed his version of the light bulb.  She wonders aloud whether organisations would allow their employees to fail so many times.

Open Innovation Can Lead to Faster Drug Creation

Nov-06-13 By IdeaConnection
Faster drug creation and swifter publication of research results can be achieved by providing academics with tools and information in the public domain. That’s the view of the Director of Academic Liaison for GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).

Malcolm Skingle was talking with The Information Daily at a recent cancer research event in the UK. He discussed how open innovation can benefit the entire scientific community.

The Most Innovative Country in Europe is…

Nov-04-13 By IdeaConnection
Quick quiz for you: which country is the most innovative in Europe? Don’t worry we won’t keep you in suspense for long because the answer is Sweden. That’s according to a new innovation indicator launched by the European Commission.

According to the Commission the indicator measures innovation output, which creates better jobs and makes Europe more competitive.

Open Innovation Success Stories that Get Us Moving

Nov-02-13 By IdeaConnection
Open innovation and crowdsourcing may well be helping companies to innovate better and faster, but they can also contribute to eradicating some of the gripes that blight our daily lives.

One of the biggest thorns in many a commuter’s side is slow moving traffic.  Here’s a quick rundown of a few crowdsourcing initiatives that were designed to get people from A to B without too much interference.

Russian Boost to Innovation and Open Innovation

Oct-31-13 By IdeaConnection
Today sees the start of an important two-day open innovation event in Moscow. The Open Innovations Forum is attracting inventors and visionaries from all over the world who are sharing their concepts and successful case histories.

The goal of the forum is to turn technology trends into economic ones, both nationally and internationally.

How the Crowd is Riding to the Rescue of Sea Horses

Oct-30-13 By IdeaConnection
The sea horse is yet another marine animal that's heading into troubled waters. They are under threat from overfishing, habitat loss and use in traditional medicine and home aquariums.

Today, many species of seahorses are on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List.

However, it’s not all bad news. An international crowdsourcing project called iSeahorse is allowing people to help improve our understanding of these animals, knowledge that will be used to protect them against multiple threats.

Crowdsourcing to Save England’s History

Oct-29-13 By IdeaConnection
England has 345,000 Grade-II listed buildings. These are structures such as stately homes, monuments and bridges that are deemed to be so historically important they cannot be altered or demolished without permission from local authorities.

To help preserve and protect the country’s architectural jewels, English Heritage the organisation that manages these historic sites has proposed turning to the crowd.

Crowdsourcing City Quiet Spots

Oct-28-13 By IdeaConnection
There is nothing quite like taking life in the slow lane every once in a while, perhaps a pause in the day to sit in solitude in some quiet, secluded spot.  In our busy urban centres these places are increasingly hard to find and are like gold dust.

If you are travelling to an unfamiliar city you may not know where the best spots are to gather your thoughts.  A new crowdsourcing initiative called Stereopublic is hoping to address this need.

The project is recruiting citizens to crowdsource tranquil settings.