September - 12 Months of Innovation

Every month in our "12 Months of Innovation" newsletter, we get to celebrate and shout about thrilling developments across our customers, crowd, and wider ecosystem. This September, we’re recognizing a customer’s commitment to sustainability and circularity, a solver’s experience with a U.S. Government agency Challenge, and an organization offering construction tech a chance to pilot across the world.

Customer of the Month - A2A

Wazoku and A2A have a long-standing relationship – the Wazoku Crowd has helped in supporting the Group’s business units to supercharge their open innovation and problem-solving in over 20 online Challenges and calls for expertise.

The A2A Group is a Life Company operating in utilities that generates, distributes, and markets a range of services: renewable energy, electricity, gas, water, and waste management. A2A is a large household name in Europe, particularly in Northern Italy and Greece, and the Group’s ambitions match its significant presence. A2A wants to lead the ecological transition, predominantly by promoting circularity and sustainability in the operations and activities of people, companies, and institutions.

We wanted to highlight two recent examples of A2A’s commitment to promoting sustainability and circularity, supported by the Wazoku Crowd network of problem solvers, start-ups, and innovators:

Call for Ventures: Clean Tech Solutions

In early 2024, the Life Ventures arm of A2A Grouplaunched a global call for solutions, ideas, and mature start-up ideas. Individuals and organizations were offered the chance to submit ideas and IP that could enhance people’s quality of life and make a shift towards more sustainable energy practices.

The core subtopics for this particular Challenge were: waste collection or management; energy production, storage, or trading; water; e-mobility; utilities; and smart city, public lighting, district heating. A2A's shortlisted applications would be invited to participate in an enrichment phase, receiving expert guidance, market understanding, and helping to explore the opportunity space of the technology. Then, following an Investor Day, these solutions would be evaluated and winners selected - the winners would be invited to participate in the A2A Life Ventures program.

This Challenge ran for several months, resulting in 100 submissions of patented solutions, patentable contributions, or non-patented concepts!

2.?Automated Robotic Impurity Gripping Systems for Glass Recycling

Later this year, A2A launched a new Challenge to the Wazoku Crowd of 700,000+ Solvers. This call searched for proposals detailing the design of automated, robotic systems for gripping and removing impurities from conveyor belts.

In A2A Ambiente’s glass scrap treatment plant in Italy, approximately 180,000 tonnes of glass-based waste is sorted and processed after being gathered in collections and through recycling. This glass waste must be filtered and treated in order to result in furnace-ready glass, which can then re-enter the market as recycled.

To support the manual filtering and screening of the glass waste supply, A2A used this open innovation Challenge to bring forward solutions and approaches that could help to realize an automatic sorting system and robotic cell. This innovative step forward could safely and efficiently remove large impurities from the conveyor belt – moving at up to 0.5m/s – without the need for human intervention.

This Challenge closed in early September 2024, garnering 40 submissions all competing for the $40,000 prize on offer.

We’re delighted to continue to support A2A’s push for circularity and sustainability – whether in the corporate venturing arm or for technical requirements in their recycling plants.

Organization of the Month – InoCrowd

InoCrowd is a Portugal-based open innovation platform, with notable partnerships in global academia and research agencies. In the last few years, you may have seen InoCrowd Challenges cross-posted to the Wazoku Crowd, and we’d like to share more about InoCrowd and their ongoing calls for innovative solutions and proposals.

Having worked with global giants such as Volkswagen and Bosch, InoCrowd is now running a notable collaboration with the Mota-Engil Group. The Challenge, ConTech Call by MEXT, is seeking global solutions and proposals from start-ups and research centers with particular expertise in the construction tech sector.

This Challenge is open until the 23rd October, 2023, and your organization’s proposal could be chosen to undergo a pilot program with the Mota-Engil Group and partner institutions at one of their sites (Portugal, Angola, Mozambique, Nigeria, Mexico, Peru, Brazil, or another country).

InoCrowd is supporting the accelerator of Mota-Engil Group in this Challenge: MEXT, or Mota-Engil Next. MEXT, based in Porto, Portugal, focuses on empowering people and organizations through collaboration – helping both the ME Group and beyond to innovate in culture, business model, industry transformation, and efficiency gains.

The ConTech Call is focused on innovative solutions in 4 key categories:

1. Green Construction: decarbonization, circularity, waste management and recycling
2. Enhanced Productivity: planning and monitoring, compliance and mitigation, finance and credit
3. Construction Supply Chain: procurement, resources, tools and tracking, inventory management
4. Future of Construction: additive manufacturing, automated processes, machine assistance and robotics, smart cities and buildings

To join the ConTech Call by MEXT, you can get started at the InoCrowd platform today!

Solver of the Month – Abdulquadri Oyinlola

This month, we’ve heard from a long-time Solver who has submitted over 35 proposals to Wazoku Crowd Challenges, requests, and opportunities: Abdulquadri Oyinlola from Offa, Nigeria. Read his piece below:

My journey into the world of crowdsourced innovation began as a curious exploration of the possibility of a reward-based problem-solving gig, whereby my abilities as a problem solver can be put to the test and perhaps utilized towards an impact that could be recognized and rewarded. A brief google search in an effort to find a platform or opportunity to put myself and my abilities out there led me to one of the biggest names in the industry at the time: InnoCentive (now Wazoku Crowd).

The Challenge opportunities and rewards up for offer on the platform was quite irresistible and I couldn’t help but jump right in, immediately picking up my first challenge and throwing whatever I got in the pile; I obviously didn’t expect to win on my first try with so much minimal effort, but it felt really good having my name and unique idea in there amongst many others from so many diverse origins and backgrounds - it was a feeling of accomplishment and fulfilment of some sort. Since the process works, nothing stopped me from attempting every other suitable Challenge on list, and those were my stepping stones that aided my development in the world of crowdsourced innovation and problem solving.

Fast-forward to some years later, I got my first win, a rather big one from quite an unexpected Seeker company. It was all the years of effort paid-off in one swoop! This unimaginable win from a mere exploratory effort set off a huge boost in my commitment and accelerated my efforts to bag further wins and bring home more glory to my name, this included learning and developing further skills to improve my idea communication and sharpen my creativity and innovative intuition. Numerous efforts followed, submission after submission, proposed with increasing quality and attention to details, but they all weren’t good enough for the high standard required; that indeed took its toll and bled out the momentum. Many passive years went by afterwards when my personal life and endeavors lessen my commitment to the journey and led to the relative abandonment of the effort for a while; however, a true passion can only be stalled and slowed, but it’s hard to stop in its tracks.

The start of the decade came with a renewed motivation to return to the glory days of problem solving and the continuous attempts in the hope of success, this came with a more defined and structured approach to solving and presenting my ideas in forms I previously haven’t used in the past, to Allah be all praise, it resulted in another success and another win which was followed by numerous near-wins that unfortunately only lacked the final touch of brilliance, or perhaps I was outperformed.

The world of crowdsourcing is vast and expansive, and it welcomes all people from all backgrounds with the brilliance and ability to give their best and perhaps make a remarkable impact into the world. From a remote town in an unknown suburb west of Nigeria, a simple young man like me has had my ideas, writings and opinion read and considered by numerous large corporations and companies around the world, with one of them being a United States government agency acknowledging my good work and deeming me worthy of a considerable sum of $10,000, not to mention the fact that my name has cemented itself out there amongst many big players in the race, that is indeed something worthy of acknowledgment.

I have come a long way from 8 years ago to this very point in time, and it has been a journey of passion, sacrifice and unrelenting believe and dedication to the system which still remain till today. Although it might be far from the most efficient way of earning a living or attaining financial security and independence, it is indeed a journey of glory, learning and fulfilment which I have had no reason to regret or abandon. It’s a race of passion, will and hope, and only the strong and most adhering makes it to the finish line.

Thank you for sharing your experience Abdulquadri!

We hoped you enjoyed our September 2024 edition of 12 Months of Innovation, bringing to light some new and exciting stories in open innovation and beyond. Subscribe and you’ll be the first to be sent the October edition when it’s released!