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Crowd Promotion of Social Causes

Jul-30-12 By IdeaConnection
It’s being referred to as the world’s first “crowdspeaking platform”, a social media innovation that lets the crowd speak out with one voice on social causes.

Thunderclap is a new initiative from product development studio De-De that allows people to come together to speak on a particular issue through a mass-shared single message.

P&G to Boost its Engagement with Open Innovation

Jul-29-12 By IdeaConnection
After more than 16 years heading up Procter and Gamble’s open innovation initiatives Jeff Weedman is stepping down from his role to serve as a P&G Executive on Loan.

His replacement is P&G veteran Laura Becker who will lead the multinational's Global Business Development group that includes Connect+Develop’s open innovation work around the world. The company hopes it will usher in a new era that will accelerate its OI engagement to deliver novel products.

Innovation and Crowdsourcing with DARPA’s Dan Kaufman

Jul-28-12 By IdeaConnection
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is one of the leading practitioners of open innovation.

The most visible components of which are its crowdsourcing contests such as the shredder challenge to help the US military reconstruct shredded documents and the competition that produced the world’s first crowdsourced military vehicle.

DARPA is working hard to develop tools to fully empower the crowd and allow it to work at its maximum potential. In the following two video interviews Dan Kaufman the Director of DARPA's Information Innovation Office talks about innovation and challenges facing the agency as well offering insights into crowdsourcing and how to stay innovative in the competitive technology industry.

Can Open Innovation Speed Up Drug Development?

Jul-26-12 By IdeaConnection
Transparency Life Sciences claims to be the world's first drug development company based on open innovation. Officially launched in January 2012 it provides a platform for patients, doctors, researchers and various other stakeholders to contribute to the design of clinical studies.

In an interview with health-care blogger Angela Dunn, Dr Tomasz Sablinski, the Founder and CEO of Transparency Life Sciences discusses the challenges and opportunities of using open innovation in drug development.

China to Turn to the Crowd to Solve Pedestrian Problems

Jul-25-12 By IdeaConnection
China has witnessed an exponential growth in the number of cars on its roads, but pedestrians and cyclists have been marginalised as urban planning focused on creating an infrastructure for a car-dependant society.
The once ubiquitous bicycle has been in decline for a number of years, taken over by the sheer volume of cars rolling off garage forecourts – 18 million sold in China in 2011.

But the pendulum may be swinging away from cars as the Chinese government wants to hear from members of the public about how to improve sidewalks and bike lines.

How the Crowd Can Breathe New Life into Urban Spaces

Jul-23-12 By IdeaConnection
Money is far too tight to mention so local councils are forced to make spending cuts and urban regeneration projects are shelved or scaled back. But an innovative crowdfunding website can help communities regenerate parts of their towns or cities that are in the most desperate need.

Spacehive is a relatively new London-based crowdfunding platform that allows projects to be posted aimed at improving public spaces. It’s a simple and easy way for people to transform where they live.

When a Doctor has a Problem…

Jul-20-12 By IdeaConnection
A new cloud-based marketplace has been launched called ScrubStorm LLC that helps doctors and clinicians tackle medical innovation problems and challenges.

The web-based initiative lets them post their problems and provide a solution or open it up to the crowd. Companies, contractors and investors also take part and the idea is to develop and commercialize viable solutions for unmet medical needs.

Highlighting the World’s Most Innovative Countries

Jul-17-12 By IdeaConnection
So, which countries are the most innovative? According to the Global Innovation Index 2012 (GII): Stronger Innovation Linkages for Global Growth Switzerland, Sweden, and Singapore lead the pack in overall innovation performance for the second year running.

The report ranks 141 countries/economies on the basis of their innovation capabilities and results, and is published by INSEAD eLab, a research center at the leading international business school, and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), a specialized agency of the United Nations.

Addressing the Innovation Deficit to Improve Global Economies

Jul-15-12 By IdeaConnection
In an incisive article on the Science|Business website Soumitra Dutta, professor of Business at INSEAD argues that innovation is necessary for sustainable growth, but that recent policy discussions on the global economy have paid relatively little attention to it, focusing instead on austerity measures. He points out that many companies still have closed innovation models, and that only a few (such as P&G and Unilever) have pursued successful strategies that open their innovation models to ideas from employees, customers and business partners – all outside the traditional boundaries of their R&D department.

Count Insects to Help Tackle Global Problems and Win Cash

Jul-12-12 By IdeaConnection
There’s no getting away from them; insects are deeply woven into the fabric of our lives. On the plus side they pollinate our food crops, enrich the ecosystem when their bodies decompose, and some of the substances they produce are used for numerous applications. But there are many foes lurking in the insect world that cause disease and devastate crops.

An enormous amount of effort has gone into coming up with ways of eradicating insects but many of these tend to be blanket efforts that kill off the good guys as well as the bad.

Eamonn Keogh's lab at the University of California, Riverside Bourns College of Engineering hopes to change that with devices that can more accurately count and classify bugs, but they need help to make them better.