January 2025 - 12 Months of Innovation
Welcome to our first edition of the 12 Months of Innovation newsletter from Wazoku in 2025! Inside you'll find:
We hope you enjoy!
Customer of the Month – PJ Wallbank Springs
PJ Wallbank Springs, Inc. is a global leader in spring assembly, whose projects and products impact millions of lives daily. PJWS helps manufacturers worldwide to deliver high-quality, reliable products by combining advanced engineering with proprietary manufacturing.
In December 2024, they launched their first open innovation Challenge: New Uses for Compression Spring Assemblies. This online opportunity came with a US$35,000 award, and was designed to ask the Wazoku Crowd of innovators for novel uses and applications for PJWS’s leading compression spring assemblies.
Going beyond automotive transmission applications could open up whole new segments for compression spring technologies, both for PJWS and for spring manufacturers around the world, too!
We’ve run similar Challenges previously, about new opportunities for leading materials or products (see Johnson Matthey ’s platinum-group metals Challenge as another example!), and we’re always impressed with the crowd’s ability to combine strong use case suggestions with cost/benefit analysis and an understanding of potential network benefits.
The Challenge closed just a few days ago, on the 28th January 2025, and resulted in 143 submissions – an incredible yield for this opportunity. We’re looking forward to supporting the PJWS team through their evaluation, and their use of open innovation to push the boundaries of what is possible in their industry.
Stay tuned for updates about successful applications!
Solver of the Month – John Davis
Revisiting our Solver’s previous successes is just one privilege – among many! – of working at Wazoku Crowd. In 2007, under the InnoCentive banner, the Oil Spill Recovery Institute (OSRI) ran an open innovation Challenge to deal with the outcomes of a 1989 oil spill into Alaska’s Prince William Sound.
The oil spill was a large disaster, with slick oil covering 1,300 miles of coastline and deeply damaging local flora and fauna – thousands of seabirds, otters, seals, and whales were affected. Even in 2007, 18 years after the spill, there was 120,000+ liters of oil still affecting the area. The InnoCentive Challenge about separating oil from water (specifically oil that had solidified, mixed into a solid frozen mass with ice-cold water in recovery bargers) was born.
John Davis applied to the Challenge in 2007. John’s background is in chemistry, having studied at Illinois State and the University of Notre Dame, but it was his work experience that helped him to solve this important Challenge. He said, in an interview for the OneSmartCrowd book by Alpheus Bingham and Simon Hill, that “One summer, I gained some experience in construction pouring concrete, and I used some of that knowledge to help inspire and solve a problem that would enable crude oil (from oil spills) to be removed from arctic waters.”
Using principles gathered from working with concrete vibrators formed the basis of John’s submission – helping to restore liquid flow to setting concrete and turning a quite solid, viscous mass into liquid once again. His solution had not yet been explored in the oil recovery industry and he felt it was a perfect illustration of how seeking input outside of the usual channels can lead to new insights and discoveries.
John’s prize money for this Challenge was actually used to finance his exploration of other high impact innovations, including in the environmental sphere and with soil remediation technologies.
When interviewed for the book, John had said that he planned to visit the OSRI in Alaska to watch his solution in action. How great must it be to see your solution in action – making a difference, one idea at a time. Thanks John!
Organization of the Month – Elbe Valley Medical
And last but not least, to our Organization of the Month. Elbe Valley Medical is a start-up, based out of Westmeath, Ireland, that is primarily known for a therapy for late stage cancer patients. In 2024, they were successful in one of our Challenges with Norwegian Offshore Wind (NOW) Accelerator. So how can a late-stage cancer therapy start-up have had applications in offshore wind? Let’s explore.
Robert Reynolds, the founder of the company, applied to the ‘How can we ensure continued use of floating wind substructures?’ Challenge as part of the Norwegian Offshore Wind Accelerator program’s work with Wazoku Crowd . Equinor ran the Challenge to discover innovative start-ups and technologies that could help to support their sustainability and reuse strategy.
The global offshore wind industry, according to Equinor’s problem statement, currently lacks extensive experience with the decommissioning and recycling of large-scale floating offshore wind farms. While there has been progress in the reuse and recycling of wind turbine blades, the gap in addressing the reuse and recycling of floating offshore wind substructures was the aim of this Challenge.
Robert applied to the opportunity, talking about how current non-destructive testing (NDT) imaging face significant challenges in the offshore industry. The overall impact on downtime in order to do the testing, costs of work disruption, and the existing need for trained specialists to interpret results means that NDT and its potential uses for sustainability-building needed reinvention. Ultrasound opportunities, as suggested by Robert and the Elbe team, also has a unique and innovative application in the non-destructive testing (NDT) imaging space. This approach can overcome the previously-mentioned typical NDT challenges in offshore wind.
Elbe Valley Medical ’s patented and unique, 4D ultrasound system was chosen as a winner of the Challenge as it could enable Equinor to complete undersea inspections without costly downtime and reducing the risk of undetected flaws in critical infrastructure. Their Problem: Solution fit came from their adjacency to the problem. Elbe Valley’s tech provides real-time, high-quality images with great accuracy even while the subject is moving. This capability was developed thanks to Elbe Valley’s background in medical imaging for use in humans and animals alike.
From medical applications to creating core value in the offshore wind industry, Elbe Valley’s unique solution and fit to the problem helped them unlock new use cases, potential partners, and revenue streams: all through the Wazoku Marketplace!
We’re excited to hear more news about the potential uses of Elbe Valley’s approaches, across the offshore wind industry and beyond. Congratulations Robert!
We hoped you enjoyed our first edition of 2025’s monthly newsletter from Wazoku, highlighting game-changing innovations from our network of Seeker companies, Solvers, and beyond.
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