How Open Innovation Can Make the Planet Greener
Sure, open innovation can help companies to innovate faster, create more diverse products, solve seemingly intractable challenges and generally help them steal a march on their competitors. But that’s not all.
The paradigm can provide the means by which many of the problems that vex society can be tackled as organisations turn to the crowd to help them cure diseases, regenerate urban areas, and solve environmental issues.
Here are three ways open innovation has been used to generate green innovations:
100 Mile House Ideas Competition – an open innovation contest that sought ideas for a home for four that had to be less than 1,200 square feet and made from materials and items manufactured or recycled within 100 miles of Vancouver, Canada. The winning idea was called ‘Myco Home’, houses that can be constructed from blocks that are recycled wood fiber colonized with mushroom mycelium.
The Scrablab Design Contest – a global call for ingenious and sustainable designs made from scrap. The organisers said they wanted to use the principles of crowdsourcing and co-creation to protect the environment and build a better world. The competition’s first prize was for an idea that turns barrels of polythene (used in the chemical industry to transport liquids) into armchairs.
Imagine H20 – the non-profit organisation Imagine H20 runs a number of open innovation competitions to generate new concepts around water issues. One such contest was the 2010 Water-Energy Nexus Competition that put up $100,000 prize money for ideas to reduce the amount of energy required to move water and waste-water. The top prize was given to a concept that uses floating “flip-wing” turbines to convert the flows of canals into energy sources.
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