Open Innovation Strategies
Collaborative Strategies to Nurture Healthy Data and Technology Ecosystems
Applying innovative data and technology to environmental problems can produce results faster but doing so depends on creating healthy technology ecosystems that grow and thrive across all sectors: public, private and non-profit. Open innovation strategies are the building blocks to get us there.
Strategies
Modular Innovation
A healthy environmental technology ecosystem stimulates the development and dissemination of data and tools. To do so, it must provide its members with the right blend of skills, processes, and resources to pursue and develop a vast variety of ideas at varying levels of maturity.
Challenges and Prize Competitions
Challenges—also known as prize competitions—stand as an exceptional platform for government agencies to collaborate with external organizations to push the boundaries of science and discover innovative solutions to diverse problems. Compared to widely-used government contracts, challenges can be structured in a myriad of ways (i.e., with multiple phases, timelines, etc.), and they’re open to everyone with low barriers to entry. They can also be co-funded with outside organizations.
Given their advantages in jump starting and accelerating innovation, challenges are an especially under-utilized way for environmental and natural resource agencies to work with external organizations on the development of new solutions to known problems.
Want to see an example of them in action, check out the Water Data Prize
Open Source Data and Software
Open source software provides transparency and security for federal software by allowing scrutiny of codebases and development processes. Its customizability and cost-effectiveness enable agencies to meet the unique requirements of public service delivery while fostering collaboration and innovation - within and outside of the government environment.