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Elmer’s Products Shares its Open Innovation Experiences

Sep-15-13 By IdeaConnection
Up until two years ago, Elmer’s Products dealt with new product development internally under the direction of individual business leaders. Today, that’s all changed and an Innovation Team works across the company’s business units coordinating internal and external efforts.

In an interview with Consumer Goods Technology, Joe Wetli, director of Innovation and New Business Development for Elmer’s discusses how he has helped the Glue-All and crafts products company switch to an OI approach.

Global Youth Demand Innovation Support

Sep-13-13 By IdeaConnection
One message came through loud and clear at the BYND 2015 Global Youth Summit in Costa Rica this week – and that was that young people from across the world want governments to support innovation and technology.

The United Nations-sponsored conference was attended by 700 young people and followed online by at least another 3,000 who also contributed ideas to social media hubs in 25 different countries.

Crowdsourcing to Protect Endangered Species

Sep-11-13 By IdeaConnection
According to the Kenya Wildlife Service the current population of black rhinos in Africa is an estimated 3,100, down from about 65,000 in 1970. One of the principle reasons for their decline has been poaching. Many of the animals are hunted down and killed for their horns.

To help protect these and other endangered animals, the Instant Wild Project has created an Instant Wild app where members of the public can assist researchers and conservationists in learning more about endangered species and preventing poaching.

The crowdsourcing project has already led to the identification of species that were thought to be extinct.

NFL Issue $10 Million Open Innovation Challenge

Sep-08-13 By IdeaConnection
The National Football League has launched an open innovation contest to help make the sport safer for its players.

A $10 million dollar prize pool has been created to encourage innovators to come up with breakthrough technologies that lead to improved ways of monitoring and protecting the head against trauma.

Crowdsourcing Ideas to Protect Against Killer Asteroids

Sep-05-13 By IdeaConnection
Our little corner of the galaxy can be a hazardous place with asteroids and comets whizzing around. It’s likely they saw off the dinosaurs some 65 million years ago, and the threat is always there that we could suffer the same fate.

But how do you hunt down an asteroid and reduce the likelihood of such an explosive ending to humanity? That’s what NASA is trying to figure out and earlier this year the space agency put out a request for ideas on how to protect the Earth from asteroids.

Of the more than 400 concepts that were submitted, 96 have been selected to be explored in a public workshop at the end of this month.

Open Innovation Event to Cut Electricity Bills

Sep-03-13 By IdeaConnection
This coming weekend developers, designers, energy experts and budding entrepreneurs will be trying to create apps and hardware to help consumers better understand, access and manage their electricity consumption.

The MaRS Energy Hackathon is an idea-generating event taking place in Toronto and sponsored by Prepr Foundation, an open education non-profit.

Crowdsourcing Sight for the Visually Impaired

Aug-31-13 By IdeaConnection
A novel smartphone app is using the power of the crowd to help visually impaired individuals learn about what their immediate environment looks like.

MySmartEye connects people with vision conditions to volunteers who use their sight to describe what can be seen.

On Being an Open Innovation Problem Solver with IdeaConnection

Aug-30-13 By IdeaConnection
Whether through technology scouting, R&D problem solving teams or prior art citation searches, IdeaConnection’s problem solvers are coming up with world-class solutions that are helping companies  tackle some of their thorniest issues, innovate and get ahead of the game.

We carry out interviews with our top solvers and find out what motivates these creative brains - and it's not just the financial rewards. Here is a snapshot of some of the things they have been saying:

 

Big Business Dissatisfaction with Internal R&D

Aug-29-13 By IdeaConnection
In an article entitled ‘Big Business Outsources Innovation to Start-ups’ Crain’s New York Business focuses on an increasing tendency of large companies to outsource their R&D to smaller and nimbler players. The principle reason is the failure of in-house R&D teams to deliver.

According to the article, this new practice is increasingly driving the biggest venture capital deals in New York City. Firms have become frustrated that the returns from internal R&D have not been as high or as cutting edge as expected.

Become a Virtual Mountain Rescuer with Open Innovation

Aug-28-13 By IdeaConnection
Here’s a neat crowdsourcing initiative that could save lives.  The aeroSee project lets anyone in the world help search and rescue missions by analyzing live feeds coming from drone-mounted cameras.

You can become a virtual mountain rescuer from your armchair.