GE is calling on European technologists, entrepreneurs and start-ups to participate in a new phase of its €160 million ($200 million) open innovation challenge – seeking the best ideas for harnessing and managing energy at home.
The “Powering Your Home” challenge, launched by GE and its venture capital partners, is seeking innovation ideas which build and improve the eco-home of the future with new technologies.
The initiative aims to build on the success of the first phase of GE’s “ecomagination Challenge: Powering the Grid”, which attracted more than 4,000 submitted ideas, of which more than 1,100 were in the category of home energy use.
In the next phase of the Challenge, these ideas will be re-examined and participants are encouraged to submit new ideas or resubmit an idea if it has evolved.
The new challenge is launching just as a newly released GE survey, the GE Global Innovation Barometer, reports how senior business people believe companies will increasingly need to adopt open innovation initiatives if they are to drive growth.
The independent survey of 1,000 business executives in 12 countries outlines how a new landscape for innovation is developing, placing an increased premium on addressing local needs, marshalling the creativity of individuals and smaller organisations and forging strategic partnerships.
The “Powering Your Home” challenge will provide investment, commercial relationship and other partnership opportunities for award winners. The judging panel of GE executives and leading academics and technologies will select five $100,000 Innovation Award winners whose ideas represent pioneering entrepreneurship and innovation.
The judging panel for this phase will also include a group of leading participants who submitted ideas in the first phase and have agreed to serve as Challenge Community Leaders. In this role, they will help to judge the “Powering Your Home” ideas, and help guide the Challenge as it evolves and progresses.
The Challenge was launched in July 2010 in collaboration with leading venture capital firms Emerald Technology Ventures, Foundation Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and RockPort Capital and the Carbon Trust.
The Challenge is part of GE’s ecomagination business strategy and was formed as a global commitment to build innovative, clean-energy technologies and help fund the most promising ideas.
Proposals are sought in two broad categories of the eco-home: energy efficiency, including management software, appliances and air conditioning; and renewable power, including solar, wind, hydro and biomass.
The inaugural “GE Global Innovation Barometer,” an independent survey of 1,000 business executives in 12 countries, found that the greatest innovations of our time will be those that help address human need, more so than those that simply create the most profit.
The “GE Global Innovation Barometer” was commissioned by GE and conducted by research and consulting firm StrategyOne to identify drivers and deterrents of innovation and to analyse perceptions around innovation challenges.
“This study illustrates that the rules around innovation are changing, and that companies, like ours, will need to evolve our strategy in order to stay competitive, drive growth and contribute meaningfully to the economy,” said Beth Comstock, chief marketing officer and senior vice president, GE. “For innovation to flourish, we must embrace a new innovation paradigm that promotes collaboration between all players – big, small, public, and private - fosters creativity, and emphasizes solutions that meet local needs.”
In the study, innovation was consistently seen as a strong driver of a prosperous economy. Ninety-five percent of executives said innovation is the main lever for a more competitive national economy, and 88 percent agreed that innovation is the best way to create jobs in their country.
While the notion that innovation drives prosperity is not new, the survey sheds light on the evolving definition of prosperity. More than three-quarters of executives (77%) said they believe the greatest innovations of the 21st century will be those that help address human needs, such as improving health quality or enhancing energy security, more than those that simply create the most profit.
They believed innovation would be a catalyst for improving multiple areas of citizens’ lives in the next 10 years, including health quality (87%), environmental quality (85%), energy security (82%), and access to education (81%).
“The results clearly demonstrate that globally our priorities are shifting from innovations that simply make money to innovations that also create good in people’s lives,” said Comstock.
The Challenge will be open until March 1st, 2011 at www.ecomagination.com/challenge
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