Corporations and non–profits are increasingly looking outside organisational boundaries to identify people with good ideas to solve their ethical and environmental challenges and are increasingly turning to crowd sourcing, using online platforms with prize- led competitions rewarding those with the best solutions.
We all remember the Virgin Earth challenge with a prize of $25m for “preserving history for many generations to come” by significantly helping reduce climate change- no small order! It felt rather over most people's heads, however, this use of dragon’s den tactics is taking a more mainstream grip with increasing numbers of companies beginning to harness the collective brain power of consumers, accademics and entrepreneaurs.
A couple of recent additions include One Billion Minds, the innovation platform that connects scholars with solution-seeking companies & non-profits and Betacup, a Starbucks led online competition and community hub to solve the problem of the 58 billion paper coffee cups thrown away every year.
Are businesses really onto something? can a pot of prize money and some recognition be all you need to get to quicker and better solutions to complex sustainability problems- can 'we', that's any one of us, help solve some of the biggest issues? or is this just another marketing fad? .....time will tell, which should give me just enough time to get my self-growing bio based material coffee cup idea entered.
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