September 25, 2009

Fast Company article mentions GWC as an innovator

Fast Company looks at three ways for organizations to spur innovation: observe your users own solutions/adaptations, crowd source and host a collaborative competition. For the last method, Judith Rodin, president of the Rockefeller Foundation, holds up GWC and Ashoka's Changemakers competition as an example. From the article:

With a shout-out to Ashoka, a company that invests in social entrepreneurs worldwide, Rodin explained that a global water challenge was posted a few months ago with a prize for the winner. Instead of groups of people competing quietly in their own places, competitors posted their solutions--the sooner they posted the sooner they received access and visibility to the other solutions people posted. “That gives you two things, a line of sight to see where the white spaces may be, and a collaboration in the competition because the sooner you re-post and revise the sooner you get access to other people’s re-posting.” The winning solution came from 54 different companies connecting one solution. This solution is now being taken to scale with a million dollar grant from Coca-Cola.

As the world has become smaller through technology, globalization, and interconnectedness, the speed with which ideas spread around the world is increasing, which means ideas come twice as fast and their half-lives are halved. Instead of being a singular idea, innovation with a capital “I” now has empirical data, an evidence-based canon of literature, and innovation models. The “a-ha” moment, according to Rodin, is becoming yet another predictable business model. So long innovation, hello Innovation.

Read the full article.