WHO CAN PARTICIPATE?

Everybody can participate in innonatives, being it a natural person or legal entity.  To join you basically need an internet connection and access to a device such as a computer, tablet or smartphone.

Once you have registered and created your user account you can start using the platform and collaborating with the innonatives community. For specific parts of the platform, such as crowd funding, you need a Paypal account or a credit card. For some closed challenges you need to apply specifically and accept any challenge specific terms of use.

WHY SHOULD I PARTICIPATE?

A lot of sustainability related problems are too big to solve on your own. At innonatives you can collaborate with others to solve meaningful problems in a creative way. You can suggest problems and work on solutions. You can propose your own projects to be further developed and funded. You can find inspiration as well as the right partners and support to implement great solutions in the real world. You can sell and buy products and solutions in the online marketplace and you can vote for and discuss ideas as well as give and receive input and recommendations. You can earn money. You can become famous and further develop your skills and experience. You can participate in this new movement to make the world a better place. Best of all: you will have a blast working with cool and creative people from around the world.

WHO IS BEHIND THE PLATFORM?

innonatives.com is an enabling platform generated by the European Sustainability Maker project. The Sustainability Maker project is carried out by five core partners and a wider network of universities, companies and non-profit organisations. The core partners are econcept, Agency for Sustainable Design (manager), ecosense media & communication, webclusive, Politecnico di Milano and Forum soziale Technikgestaltung. The project is supported by the LIFE financial instrument of the European Union. For more information about the Sustainability Maker project see www.sustainabilitymaker.org.  

WHAT CAN I DO AT INNONATIVES?

At innonatives you can

  • Team up with others to solve meaningful Sustainability related problems and feel good about it,
  • Propose problems to be solved by the innonatives community,
  • Run a challenge from problem to final implementation as an open source or a closed innovation project,
  • Participate in open or closed challenges,
  • Suggest ideas and solutions that shall be realised,
  • Discuss and collaborate to find innovative ideas and improve solutions,
  • Vote on problems, ideas and solutions,
  • Learn what the ‘innonatives’ think about your projects, ideas and solutions,
  • Fund the best ideas to be implemented,
  • Get funding for your projects,
  • Earn money and rewards, if your ideas/ solutions are selected,
  • Support implementation of solutions in real life,
  • Receive support for implementation of your projects,
  • Get your projects promoted via the platform and social media,
  • Find partners and the right communities or networks to team up with,
  • Sell and buy products/solutions at the online marketplace,
  • Further develop your skills and become an expert that joins the innonatives expert team,
  • Have fun and be inspired while working with the international creative community.

WHAT IS CROWD VOTING?

The public or a specific community (the crowd) votes for challenges, solutions, products and designs to identify which out of a number of solutions shall be selected. Crowd voting is also a new form of target group research used to get insight into public opinion.

WHAT IS CROWD FUNDING?

Crowd funding is an approach for generating funds by asking the general public or a specific community (crowd) to invest in or sponsor activities such as implementation of new solutions or products via online platforms, e.g. used by musicians, designers and artists to fund their productions.

WHAT IS CROWD SOURCING?

Crowd sourcing is a term composed by the words "crowd" and "outsourcing" that indicates the act of taking tasks usually performed by contractors (or employees) and outsourcing them to a specific community of people (crowd) in systems of mass-production (Howe, J. 2006. “The rise of crowdsourcing.” Wired Magazine 14:1-4).  

Simply put, the general public (crowd) is invited and encouraged to generate contributions (ideas, innovations, concepts, services, products etc.) for a company or other organization.

WHAT IS PEER TO PEER PRODUCTION (P2P)?

Peer-production is a new form of production (of goods, contents or services) that involves members of communities on an organized base, e.g. internet platform. It’s a "coordinated, (chiefly) internet-based effort whereby volunteers contribute project components, and there exists some process to combine them to produce a unified intellectual work" (Benkler, Yochai. 2006. The wealth of networks: how social production transforms markets and freedom. New Haven [Conn.]: Yale University Press: 277).

WHAT IS OPEN INNOVATION?

Open innovation is a term originally coined by Prof. Henry Chesbrough meaning "the use of purposive inflows and outflows of knowledge to accelerate internal innovation, and expand the markets for external use of innovation, respectively. [This paradigm] assumes that firms can and should use external ideas as well as internal ideas, and internal and external paths to market, as they look to advance their technology" (Henry Chesbrough, Open Innovation: Researching a New Paradigm, 2006).  

Today the term open innovation generally stands for activities and platforms that open up the innovation activities (of companies) to additional external actors and experts.

WHAT IS AN ONLINE-SHOP AND -AUCTIONING?

In online marketplaces products and services can be traded using different payment and pricing options, comparable to eBay or Amazon. In the innonatives marketplace predominantly products, services and solutions that aim at increasing sustainability shall be traded.

WHAT KINDS OF NEW BUSINESS MODELS DOES THE PLATFORM PROMOTE?

The innonatives platform promotes for instance: socio-preneurism (business models that have at its core to do good for society), grassroots economies that move the focus from mass production to individualisation and production on demand, and on ethical, personal, political and sustainable values of the goods (products and services), mass customization, co-design and co-production etc.

WHAT IS SUSTAINABILITY?

The innonatives definition of sustainability is in line with the original Brundtland definition: “Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs” and covers the three (four) dimensions: Environment, social, economic prosperity (and culture). innonatives will focus on environmental issues and social perspectives a little more than economic, but all projects should include a solid business or implementation model.

WHAT IS RADICAL INNOVATION?

Radical innovation, as opposed to incremental innovation, means that we create product innovation, materials innovation, technological and process innovation, better infrastructures, new services etc. that are able to change the way people behave and organize their daily life leading to considerably more sustainability.  Also, social innovation will be a big part of innonatives projects.  The basic goal is to create solutions that are good for people and planet and create prosperity for all. Not solutions that are just a little bit less bad than what we have today.

WHAT IS AN OPEN CHALLENGE?

Generally a challenge can be “open” with no restricition to copyrights, or “closed”, which means the Challenge Owner would like to have the exclusive copyrights and wants to create a closed innovation space, that only actors who agree to challenge specific conditions regarding copyrights and compensation can join. An open challenge by default uses the Creative Commons License “Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)”, which means you are free to share (to copy, distribute and transmit the work) and to remix – to adapt the work under the following conditions: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor, i.e. mention who owns the copyrights (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). You may not use this work for commercial purposes. If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one. The basic idea behind open challenges is that everybody around the world shall be able to use the solutions for free and develop them further.

WHAT IS A CLOSED CHALLENGE?

Generally a challenge can be “open” with no restrictions to copyrights, or “closed”, which means the Challenge Owner would like to have the exclusive copyrights and wants to create a password protected closed innovation space, that only actors can join, who agree to challenge specific conditions regarding copyrights and compensation. In the case of a closed challenge the seeker will have to identify what the solvers get out of developing solutions (prize money, honorary, a license contract etc.) and this will be fixed by a cooperation contract that the platform helps to create online at the beginning of the closed challenge. The routine on how to generate these kinds of contracts has been developed by our lawyer specialised in international intellectual property rights issues in open innovation systems. This module is accessible on request please email info@innonatives.com

HOW DO CHALLENGES WORK?

The platform encourages sustainability challenges on a regular basis to tackle socio-economic or environmental problems. In a challenge a Challege Owner identifies and describes a sustainability related problem and asks the community of the platform – the Solvers – to solve the problem and develop solutions. The solutions will be evaluated by the Challenge Owners, the Experts (internal and/ or external experts of the platform), and the Crowd (crowd voting). Then the best solution(s) will be implemented by the Challenge Owners or a related entity for instance by using crowd funding or via the innonatives online marketplace for sustainable solutions.

Everybody can become a Challenge Owner: for instance a company, a municipality, a community, a school, a designer, a researcher, an individual. The organisation or individual first has to register at innonatives.com and then needs to describe the challenge using this format at the platform. If the Challenge is related to Sustainability and meaningful, it will be accepted by innonatives and published at innonatives.com.

Potential Challenge Owners also need to prove that they have a serious interest and the capabilities/ network to be able to implement solutions. E.g. for a challenge that aims at improving the socio-economic system in a specific region it is important that regional actors are involved, who are very interested in solving the problem and implementing the best solutions.

The innonatives platform will assign a moderator to each challenge, who helps seekers and solvers throughout the whole process of a challenge from formulation of the problem to final implementation.

Generally a challenge can be “open” with no restricted copyrights, or “closed”, which means the seeker would like to have the exclusive copyrights and wants to create a password protected closed innovation space, that only actors can join, who agree to challenge specific conditions regarding copyrights and compensation. In case of a closed challenge the Challenge Owner will have to identify, what the solvers get out of developing solutions (prize money, honorary, a license contract etc.) and this will be fixed by a cooperation contract that the platform helps to create online. The routine on how to generate these kinds of contracts has been developed by our experts specialised in international intellectual property rights issues in open innovation systems. This module is accessible on request, please email info@innonatives.com

These are the steps to run a challenge on innonatives.com

Step 1: Register: Register on the platform, if you have not done so yet.

Step 2: Define your challenge: Think about all details of the problem you would like to formulate, also about why you think it is sustainability related, and set up the necessary network of appropriate actors.

Step 3: Upload your challenge on the platform: Use the format to describe your challenge. The form will ask you for the details of the problem. You can upload pictures and videos and you will be asked to describe the network of actors and how you foresee implementation of the best solutions, if you want it to be an open challenge or a closed challenge etc. The more interesting your description is and the more meaningful the problem, the more likely it is that the innovation crowd of the platform will want to work with you. Your challenge will have a time frame and innovation process you like to run through. You can identify which phases out of (a) idea generation, (b) concept development, (c) solution development you like the innovation community to complete and how much time you like to allow for each phase. After each phase an evaluation takes place organised by innonatives and only the really good contributions will be invited to be taken further to the next phase (see step 6 below).

Step 4: Create attention for your challenge using networking, blogs and social media etc. It is essential that you get a critical mass of sovlers working with you. innonatives.com will help with the communciation about your challenge.

Step 5: Support the development of solutions: The Challenge Owner and the moderator of the challenge will support the innovation activities with feedback, information, input, own ideas etc. An expert panel will support the development and help evaluate the solutions.

Step 6: Select the best solutions: After a specific period of time that the Challenge Owner has identified, e.g. 3 months, the innovation phases of the challenge will be closed and the best solutions will be identified. This is done by the Challenge Owner, the platform experts, as well as the crowd (in an open challenge) by crowd voting.

Step 7: Implement solutions: The best identified solutions will either be developed further, if needs be, or can go to the crowd funding part of the platform, if funding is needed for implementation.  Additionally, they can go directly to the online marketplace, if it is a tangible product, concept or service that you like to sell to others. In case you need additional partners for implementation, the platform will help to find those.

Step 8: Upload the success story: After successful implementation the platform will ask you to document the success story and upload it at innonatives.com as a great case study.

CAN I STILL EDIT AN UPLOADED CHALLENGE, CONCEPT OR IDEA?

Yes. Just go to your profile page ("YOUR USER NAME" in the header) and choose the challenge, concept or idea you want to edit.

WHAT KINDS OF PROBLEMS CAN I PROPOSE?

The focus of innonatives problems to be tackled is very broad from a community related project in a disaster region to a technological challenge for a company in Europe, from social innovation challenges to recycling and reusing materials and components. It is important that the problems start with a Sustainability issue such as a socio-economic (poverty, deseases, malnutrition, exploitation, unemployment etc.) or an environmental problem (climate change, resource and energy depletion, biodiversity loss, fresh water and food scarcity etc.) or both. Furthermore the more meaningful the problem is to a larger group of people, the more likely it is that a lot of innovators like to develop solutions to the problem. Feel free to check here (upcoming) if your problem is suitable for innonatives.

WHO DECIDES WHICH CHALLENGES ARE TACKLED?

Everybody can propose problems for the innonatives platform to become innovation challenges.

In the first phase of innonatives the platform moderators evaluate  and decide if the problem proposed can be published as a challenge. The criteria are if the problem is related to Sustainability and if it is meaningful to a larger group of people. The moderators will also help the Challenge Owner to formulate a meaningful Challenge to go online. In the scond phase of innonatives the innonatives community will also be asked to vote on the suggested problems, to define which shall become challenges (Crowd Voting).

WHAT IF MY CHALLENGE OR SOLUTION IS NOT REALLY RELATED TO SUSTAINABILITY?

We recommend that you reconsider your scope and focus. We are happy to help you with this. Please contact the help desk <info@innonatives.com>.

You can also evaluate the sustainability of your project with our sustainability screening tool (upcoming).

HOW DO I UPLOAD FILES, IMAGES, VIDEOS ETC.?

You can upload files, images and videos. File size is limited to 20MB each upload. Recommended formats for better compatibility are: doc, xls, pdf, jpg, png and ps. We recommend implementing videos through embedded code from Youtube or Vimeo.

HOW DOES COLLABORATION WORK AT INNONATIVES?

If you participate in a Challenge you can collaborate with other users. For istance, you can post ideas and comment on ideas of others, as well as they will comment on your ideas. You can also invite other users to join your innovation team and you will be invited by others to join their team. Once you have formed a team your names will be displayed as members of the team and you can collaborate offline and online to develop a phantastic solution together. Thus you can share and combine your different skills and competencies. If you develop a winning solution you also share the rewards among the team. You should have discussed beforehand how you will distribute the rewards among the team members. You can email each other via innonatives. In a later stage of the innonatives development the platform will offer each team a private innovation space where you can share information among the group members, privately converse and develop ideas and work on documents in the team exclusively.

WHO DECIDES WHICH IS/ ARE THE BEST SOLUTIONS?

In the challenges decision making is done by three processes:

(a) The Challenge Owner selects the most promising solutions from his/her point of view.

(b) The crowd votes.

(c) The innonatives experts evaluate solutions.

The combination of the three evaluation mechanisms creates the final decision. The Challenge Owner might introduce a weighting factor. For instance, Crowd Voting might be more important for him than the expert opinion or vice versa.

Solutions that are not selected can still be used and developed further by other actors and can be offered in the online marketplace.

DO I NEED TO RUN CHALLENGES TO USE CROWD FUNDING AND THE ONLINE MARKETPLACE?

No. You can use each innonatives module individually. The only bottleneck or pre-condition is that every project and solution promoted via innonatives aims to increase sustainability. 

HOW CAN I RECEIVE POINTS AND REWARDS?

You get activity points and rewards through your contributions and how these are evaluated by others. The more successful your ideas and solutions are, the better your reputation will be. The platform has a transparent monitoring mechanism for this and you can check your status in your own profile.

CAN I BECOME AN EXPERT AT INNONATIVES?

Most active users with the highest reputation will be offered the chance to become innonatives experts. In addition experts are appointed by the platform according to their expertise. Feel free to apply if you are interested in receiving expert status here <info@innonatives.com>.

DO I HAVE TO PAY?

Generally participation is for free. However, for commercial companies and when there is a cash flow initiated through the platform, innonatives asks for a moderate fee as a percentage of the cash flow (to be defined). This income is only used as a financial contribution towards running the innonatives platform. Any surplus generated will be invested by innonatives in sustainability innovation projects.

WHAT CAN I EARN?

You can make money/generate funds by participating in innonatives in three ways:

(a) If you sell your solutions in the online marketplace, you can create revenue.

(b) If you run a successful crowd funding project, you will receive the funds to implement your project.

(c) If you participate in a challenge and your solution is/ solutions are chosen, you will earn either an award, receive licence fees, or earn reputation, depending on what the Challenge Owner has defined and announced beforehand.

WHAT KIND OF STUFF CAN I SELL AND BUY IN THE ONLINE MARKETPLACE?

You can sell all products, services and solutions, which are following our sustainability guidelines (upcoming).

WHO OWNS THE SOLUTIONS?

The inventor owns the solution. If this is a group of people, they share the ownership according to what they have agreed, when they formed the team.

HOW DOES INNONATIVES DEAL WITH INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND COPYRIGHT ISSUES?

Please refer to our legal documents here. All copyrights belong to the inventor(s) of the solution. In the case of open challenges and solutions we adopt the Creative Commons License “Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)”. The basic idea behind open challenges is that everybody around the world shall be able to use solutions for free and develop them further but the owner of the solution will always be mentioned as such. In the case of a closed challenge, the Challenge Owner will have to identify what the solvers get out of developing solutions (prize money, honorary, a license contract etc.) and this will be fixed by a cooperation contract that the platform helps to create online at the beginning of the closed challenge. The routine on how to generate these kinds of contracts has been developed by our lawyer specialised in international intellectual property rights issues in open innovation systems. This is accessible on request please email info@innonatives.com

DOES INNONATIVES PROVIDE LICENSE AGREEMENTS?

Yes. The platform offers a contracting module, where model contracts and agreements can be generated. This is accessible on request please email info@innonatives.com

IS INNONATIVES A FOR PROFIT BUSINESS?

No. innonatives is organized as a not for profit organisation that uses any revenues and donations only to run the platform and pay for the expenses to sustain the service. Any remaining funds will be re-invested in innonatives projects via the innonatives fund.

HOW DO I DEACTIVATE / REACTIVATE MY ACCOUNT AND WHAT HAPPENS WITH MY DATA?

You can deactivate and delete your account at any time. If you deactivate it, all your personal data will be invisible for others. If you delete your account, all personal data will be lost. All your contributions that you had delivered to any of the running and completed Challenges beforehand will still remain on the platform, as they might have been used already by others and have been included in solutions that might have been compelted or archived etc.

WHAT IS THE PRIVACY AND DATA POLICY OF INNONATIVES?

Please read our documents under “Privacy policy” for detailed descriptions. We will not allow anyone to access your private data. There will be no external advertisement on innonatives.com.

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SOMETHING DOES NOT WORK, OR I WOULD LIKE TO SUGGEST A NEW FEATURE

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MY QUESTION IS NOT LISTED ABOVE

Please submit questions to  info@innonatives.com