The Open Innovation Challenge is designed to mine ideas that can help solve some of our environmental challenges. It is sponsored by GE, who has partnered with some well-known venture capital firms including Emerald Technology Ventures, Foundation Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and RockPort Capital to provide up to $200 million in resources. The goal is to move closer towards implementation of the most promising ideas on how to create the next generation electric grid. Top voted ideas will be automatically routed to judges and venture capitalists for more in-depth evaluation.
The Open Innovation Challenge uses the Brightidea Platform. This platform covers: proposal submission, voting and collaboration, team submission with public and private fields, routing and prioritization via subject matter experts, private collaboration rooms for idea development, sharing and promotion of Ideas on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, integration with Google Maps, and an iPhone app.
The challenge started on July 13, 2010, the site will remain open for submissions and voting until September 30, 2010. Formalized agreements will be announced in November 2010 and continue into 2011. This is another in a series of crowdsorucing efforts that are emerging. I have written about Cisco’s i-prize on several occasions (see Cisco Launches Second I-Prize Competition). Their first winner was also about smart energy management.
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