WALTHAM, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--InnoCentive, Inc., the global leader in open innovation, crowdsourcing, and prize competitions, today announced collaboration with Lumina Foundation designed to uncover new ways to catalyze systemic changes in higher education. Working together, the two organizations hope to explore novel approaches so millions of Americans can access and earn high quality college degrees, certificates and credentials.
As part of this collaborative alliance, InnoCentive and Lumina have launched a dedicated Pavilion located on InnoCentive.com which serves as the premier online destination for open innovation Challenges focused on solving some of the most pressing problems affecting postsecondary attainment in America. By crowdsourcing these education problems to a global community of more than 285,000 diverse problem solvers, Lumina Foundation seeks to leverage innovative new methods and harness the world’s creative talent to achieve its goal of increasing postsecondary degree attainment in America.
“When it comes to education beyond high school, America is now being rapidly outpaced by other countries around the world,” said Jamie Merisotis, president and CEO of Lumina Foundation, the nation’s largest private foundation focused on enrolling and graduating more students from college. “Our collaboration with InnoCentive is about finding the truly innovative ideas that our country needs to create a more affordable, equitable and accountable higher education system.”
Many factors are contributing to the need to increase attainment, including the increasing complexity of society, the growing role that information and information technology play in people’s lives, and the fact that people from different countries and cultures live and work together more than ever. The U.S.—like the rest of the world—is becoming a knowledge society, not just a knowledge economy.
Coinciding with the launch of the Lumina Foundation Open Innovation Pavilion, two new Challenges are now posted, each with a total award value of $10,000. As Ideation Challenges, prizes will be awarded for the best and most innovative solution submission(s) as determined by Lumina Foundation. A third Challenge, with a $100,000 award and launched late last year by Lumina, will also be posted to the new Pavilion. Although Lumina’s Challenges focus on education in America, all problem solvers from around the world are encouraged and eligible to participate and apply their unique perspective:
Challenge #1
The “Correlations
to Determine the Complete Impact of Post-Secondary Education”
Challenge seeks proposals for novel and unexpected correlations between
postsecondary education and outcomes with a clear economic impact.
Challenge #2
The “Visualizing
the Impact of Significant Increases in Post-Secondary Education”
Challenge seeks compelling visual presentations of the impact of
significantly increasing post-secondary education by taking advantage of
the wealth of information and studies published in this area.
Challenge #3
The “Design
of Student-centric Websites for Open-Enrollment Colleges and Institutions”
Challenge seeks fully coded examples of a front-end user interface for
deployment by community colleges. The key requirement is that the
interface should be organized and presented in a way that focuses on
meeting the information needs of students, particularly those who are
exploring a range of avenues of study.
“Our collaboration with Lumina Foundation to support its goal of increasing higher education attainment in the America is perfectly aligned to InnoCentive’s mission to unleash the world’s creative capacity to solve important problems that matter to society,” said Alph Bingham, Co-Founder and Board Member of InnoCentive. “Through the new Pavilion and Challenges, we have no doubt that our creative Solvers from around the world will put forth innovative solutions in pursuit of Lumina’s noble goal.”
Additional information about Lumina Foundation, the Pavilion and Challenges, as well as advice to solvers, can be found on InnoCentive’s Seeker Spotlight blog which features a new post by Lumina’s Vice President of Communications and Innovation Kiko Suarez.
About Lumina Foundation
Lumina Foundation is an independent, private foundation committed to increasing the proportion of Americans with high-quality degrees, certificates and other credentials to 60 percent by 2025. Lumina’s outcomes-based approach focuses on helping to design and build an accessible, responsive and accountable higher education system while fostering a national sense of urgency for action to achieve Goal 2025.
About InnoCentive
InnoCentive is the global leader in crowdsourcing innovation problems to the world’s smartest people who compete to provide ideas and solutions to important business, social, policy, scientific, and technical challenges. Our global network of millions of problem solvers, proven challenge methodology, and cloud-based technology combine to help our clients transform their economics of innovation through rapid solution delivery and the development of sustainable open innovation programs. For more than a decade, leading organizations such as AARP Foundation, Air Force Research Labs, Booz Allen Hamilton, Cleveland Clinic, Eli Lilly & Company, EMC Corporation, NASA, Nature Publishing Group, Procter & Gamble, Scientific American, Syngenta, The Economist, Thomson Reuters, and the U.S. EPA have partnered with InnoCentive to rapidly generate innovative new ideas and solve problems faster, more cost effectively, and with less risk than ever before. For more information, visit www.innocentive.com, email info@innocentive.com, or call 1-855-CROWDNOW (U.S.) or +44 (0) 207 935 0827 (International).