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White House CTO Aneesh Chopra Announces Cooney Center Prize Winners at E3

June 17 2010 by rtw003 in Prizes |No Comments

It was great to witness the culmination of the inaugural Cooney Center Prizes for Innovation in Children’s Learning yesterday at E3 in downtown Los Angeles. The Winner of the Breakthroughs in Mobile learning category was Project NOAH, a mobile app for teaching children and youth to appreciate our natural surroundings. Coincidentally, Aneesh mentioned during the announcement that Project NOAH was inspiration for CrisisCommons’ Oil Reporter an open data initiative which is collecting and sharing information on local instances of distressed wildlife due to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Kudos to Project NOAH for all the great work that they are doing (and for picking up $50,000 in prize money).

In the Breakthroughs in Literacy Learning: Innovate with The Electric Company category, Jay Schiffman was named the winner for his entry The Electric Company Heroes. Jay received $10,000 in prizes, but perhaps more significantly, gained an opportunity to collaborate with the Sesame Workshop to carry his idea forward.

Overall, it was a fantastic event and a great way to celebrate not only the winners, but all who participated. In attendance were distinguished jury members including Warren Buckleitner, Editor, Children’s Technology Review; Alan Gershenfeld, President and CEO, E-Line Ventures; Gary E. Knell, President and CEO, Sesame Workshop, Laird Malamed, Senior Vice President, Activision Blizzard and Liz Perle, Editor-in-Chief, Common Sense Media. Also in attendance was Thomas Kalil, Deputy Director for Policy, Office of Science and Technology Policy for the White House.

: Cooney Center Prizes jury deliberates following the finalist pitches at the JW Marriott in downtown Los Angeles.

: White House CTO Aneesh Chopra and Sesame Workshop CEO Gary Knell Announce the Winner of the Breakthroughs in Mobile Learning Categoy, Project NOAH

: All of the finalists and winners for the Cooney Center Prizes for Innovation in Children’s Learning

Download the full press release

Prize Veterans Share Best Practices/Learnings at The White House

April 30 2010 by anil in Prizes, Uncategorized |No Comments

Follow the conversation and live video stream at http://www.casefoundation.org/case-soup

Rob McEwen from Gold Corp Challenge & Jim Bennett from the NetFlix Prize

“The biggest goldmine lies between everyone’s ears” – Rob McEwen

Idea Crossing featured in “Best Practices in Crowdsourcing”

January 30 2010 by rtw003 in Crowdsourcing |No Comments

“A successful prize gets people to do what they want to do anyways – it just helps them to do it more successfully.”

– Robert Sutton, behavioral psychologist

On Thursday Matthew Lees, Vice President and Senior Contributing Editor of the Patricia Seybold Group, released his latest research report entitled “Best Practices in Crowdsourcing: Leveraging the Wisdom of Crowds for your Business.” The 14 page report looks closely at several crowdsourcing examples, from Dell’s IdeaStorm to My Starbucks Idea, in addition to providing an excellent ten-point framework for how to run effective crowdsourcing programs. In his report, Matthew recognizes that “crowdsourcing offers a customer-centric approach to tapping into the collective experience, knowledge, creativity, and skills of your customers as they help you be more innovative and effective.”

Idea Crossing is featured in a special section of the report on “Crowdsourcing through Competition, Contests, and Challenges.” We maintain that “crowdsourced competitions” are great compliments the customer ecosystem, which may include forums, blogs and idea sites. A well designed competition can engage sub-communities across all areas of the larger community and focus individuals or teams on specific issues or goals that are timely and relevant to the company. Along these lines, the author further acknowledges that “a community-focused Idea Site isn’t the only technique for crowdsourcing. Another approach that has been gaining traction in recent years is the crowdsourced competition (or contest or challenge)…. Such competitions are both fascinating and frequently effective.” We concur, Matthew!

About the Patricia Seybold Group

Founded in 1978 and based in Boston, the Patricia Seybold Group provides consulting, research and advisory services, peer groups, and interactive workshops. The Patricia Seybold Group helps clients to design and continuously improve their customer-focused business strategies and processes using our proven consulting methodology, Customer Scenario® Design.

CEO and founder, Patricia Seybold, is the New York Times best-selling author of Customers.com and The Customer Revolution. Patty’s latest book, Outside Innovation, is available now.

About The Author

MATTHEW D. LEES is a Consultant and Vice President at the Patricia Seybold Group. He brings over 15 years of experience in helping organizations leverage technology to build stronger relationships with customers. As an Analyst in the group’s Customers.com Research Service, his current focus is on customer and partner communities and social media. He
specializes in the business impact of social technology, particularly its ROI, and the related organizational challenges.

Matthew was previously the principal of Lees Consulting, a provider of strategic and tactical services to businesses and not-for-profit organizations on their use of technology and the Internet. In 1996 he was a founding member of MaMaMedia Inc., the premier independent Web site for children, where, as Vice President of Customer Service and Relationship Management, he and his team grew MaMaMedia’s online community to more than 5 million registered users.

With two degrees in physics (MS Georgia Tech, Atlanta GA; BS Trinity College, Hartford, CT), Matthew has taught physics and astronomy, developed virtual reality games and museum exhibits, and designed the optical systems for medical blood analyzers.

Red Hat Launches Opensource.com

January 25 2010 by rtw003 in Open Source |No Comments

Red Hat has owned opensource.com for years, but it was always redirected to their corporate site. Today they launched opensource.com as the leading resource for anyone interested in learning about “what happens when the open source way is applied to the world.” The site is broken out in to independent channels moderated by Red Hat employees who are experts in Business, Education, Government, Law and Life. The first post is from Jim Whitehurst, Red Hat’s President & CEO.

I for one am excited to add this to my list of blogs to keep up on. At a time when everything from our social lives to our government is opening up and becoming more transparent to the greater public, I feel like this is a much needed resource to discuss the latest trends, issues and so forth in dealing with a new open source way of working and living. And it’s fitting that it comes to us from the leaders of the open source movement. Check it out when you have a chance – and if you have suggestions for content, I’m sure Red Hat will be open to hearing from you…

Oh, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t encourage you to check out Chris Grams’ interview with Anil: Five Questions with Anil Rathi of Idea Crossing. Enjoy!

Toyota Wins the Zayed Future Energy Prize

January 19 2010 by rtw003 in Prizes, Skild |No Comments

After taking home the $1.5M grand prize, what’s next for the hybrid auto Goliath?

Toyota Motor Corporation was awarded the prestigious Zayed Future Energy Prize in Abu Dhabi today by H.H. General Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces. Toyota won for its ground breaking fuel efficiency system of the third-generation Toyota Prius, the world’s first mass-produced hybrid vehicle.

According to the Khaleej Times, “Toyota was presented with the grand prize of $1.5 million, while two runners up — Zhengrong Shi, Founder and CEO of Suntech Power Holdings Co. Ltd, China and Amitabha Sadangi, CEO of International Development Enterprises India (IDEI) — were also awarded $350,000 each. All three finalists exuded the qualities associated with the Prize criteria, leadership, innovation and long-term vision, and are true ambassadors of renewable energy innovation.”

“Winning this award is true recognition of the years of hard work that went into making the Toyota Prius a reality and I am honored to receive it on behalf of Toyota Motor Corporation,” said Kazuo Okamoto, Vice Chairman of Toyota Motor Corporation. “I am confident that this will further increase awareness of hybrid vehicles and their environment-friendly features, thereby contributing to a sustainable future in the long run.”

I’m still curious why Toyota is conspicuously missing from the list of Progressive Auto X PRIZE qualified teams? I understand that high performance is not a term that is often associated with the Prius, but surly Toyota could have come up with an entry that would have given the field a run for its money? Afterall, it certainly meets all of the other technical requirements for fuel-efficiency, emissions, safety, manufacturability, capacity, etc. Oh well, here’s hoping that they pay close attention to the stage race which begins in June.

About the Zayed Future Energy Prize

The award was created in 2008 to honor of the legacy of the late Ruler of Abu Dhabi and founding father and President of the United Arab Emirates, Shaikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan and recognize and inspire innovators in renewable energy from around the world. The award is open to any individual, company or non-governmental organization (NGO) that can demonstrate a tangible clean energy solution. This year, Idea Crossing was priviledged to work with ZFEP to provide the backend technology that powered the prize. Look out for nominations for the 2011 Zayed Future Energy Prize to open in the Spring.

Answering the Call for Increased STEM Awareness and Literacy

January 11 2010 by rtw003 in Skild |No Comments

Is America finally “Rising Above the Storm” to confront a new era of Global Competitiveness?

It’s been almost fours years since the announcement of the American Competitiveness Initiative, and nearly three years since the publishing of “Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future.” Much has changed since then. Amidst the current-day backdrop of looming economic uncertainties and extended unemployment, a few recently announced public / private partnerships demonstrate that some forward-thinking organizations are prepared to tackle these challenges head-on.

In November President Obama announced “Educate to Innovate, a new campaign to improve the participation and performance of America’s students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).” Increasing STEM literacy is something we’ve been talking about for a long time, but lack of funding for too few programs have failed to reverse the negative trends. That is until recently. Programs like Dean Kamen’s FIRST Robotics competition and CSTEM are exemplary models of STEM awareness and education. Media mainstays Time-Warner Cable, Discovery Communications and Sesame Street will spread the word as part of the “Educate to Innovate” effort, and a series of National STEM design competitions hope to inspire kids in scientific inquiry through games.

The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop also stepped forward with the inaugural Cooney Center Prizes for Innovation in Childrens Learning, a national competition to inspire and identify breakthrough ideas in digital media and learning for kids.

Launched last week during the Kids at Play Summit at the 2010 International Consumer Electronics Show, the program will annually award cash prizes and provide development and business planning support from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center. Innovators will be challenged in two main categories: breakthroughs in mobile learning, and breakthroughs in literacy learning: innovate with the Electric Company. A distinguished jury including Bing Gordon of Kleiner Perkins, John Shen of Nokia Research Lab and Alan Gershenfeld of E-Line Media will vet the applications.

Competitions like the Cooney Center Prizes for Innovation seem to be gaining increasingly favorable attention for their high leverage and efficiency. In December the OMB circulated a memorandum on the Open Government Directive stating that within 90 days it would issue “a framework for how agencies can use challenges, prizes and other incentive-backed strategies to find innovative or cost-effective solutions to improving open government.” Thankfully there are a handful of visionary organizations that have already heeded this call.

How else might we address the STEM awareness / literacy problem? What other organizations are investing in the future of American competitiveness?

Coppead wins 1st annual Innovation Challenge Brazil

November 24 2009 by admin in Innovation Challenge |No Comments

Congratulations and a job well-done to Insper. With some of our training and best practices for managing an official Innovation Challenge competition they skillfully executed. Obrigado Marcos & Insper!

Idea Crossing partnered with Insper Sao Paulo (formerly IBMEC) to bring the first edition of a Brazilian Innovation Challenge.

Innovation Challenge Brazil edition sponsored by PepsiCo & Bunge: Winners announced! article in BusinessWeek of Brazil: http://bit.ly/5jIek6.

Team "Just Win It" among executives of Bunge

Highlights (translated):

BioBunge-Winning Solution: The group drew up an action plan for the multinational agribusiness created the BioBunge, and to produce biodiesel from grains and their ethanol plants already installed. Once produced, the fuel could be replaced with the producers supplying raw material to Bunge, and also buy fertilizer it by grains.
Reaction from Dir of Marketing & Sustainability: “As we know the industry, we became addicted to a vision waterproof. Listen to suggestions from qualified people who do not live this everyday is [valuable], ” says Adalgiso Telles, director of marketing and sustainability of Bunge. The company, however, intends to produce biodiesel from grains in large scale.