Perspectives on Innovation

Affordable public housing. Quality schools. Safe neighborhoods. Clean streets. Inexpensive mass transit. There’s no shortage of challenges facing American cities.  But there is an innovative new way to go about solving them:  open innovation.  Last week we announced our “Empowering American Cities” initiative, in which we invite city governments to post a Challenge on our Innovation Marketplace, where it can be addressed by our global community of more than 180,000 scientists, inventors, engineers, researchers, and business people who thrive on solving the world’s toughest problems.

The Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce recently partnered with InnoCentive to generate more than 125 ideas for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by increasing the region’s mass transit ridership to 1 billion riders.  The winning idea came from a Chicago-based urban affairs writer who received an award of $5,000.  Creative thinkers from as far away as Kenya, Australia and Japan submitted countless new ideas designed to improve Chicago’s mass transit system—from transformational green initiatives to new fare structures and improved user experience.

Now we’re offering the largest cities in America the opportunity to harness the collective brainpower of the world’s most creative minds to solve a pressing urban challenge.  Why are we doing this?  We recognize that what’s good for cities is good for everyone.  We believe InnoCentive can help to impact this positive change, and we’re excited to be part of bringing about solutions that can truly make a difference in the day to day lives of millions of people.

What do you think?  What Challenge would you encourage your city or town to post to our Solvers?  Tell us in the comments.

Tags: Challenges, Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, crowdsourcing, Empowering American Cities, government

Trackback URL