The MIT Center for Collective Intelligence (CCI) has announced that its Climate CoLab —a global platform that crowdsources new ideas to address climate change—has spun out and migrated to Wazoku’s global Challenge Community InnoCentive, a 500,000-plus community that works together to problem-solve pressing global sustainability issues.
Climate CoLab was created by CCI in 2009 to host the exchange of ideas among its members, which includes professionals working in such fields as government, business, academia and non-profits, as well as everyday citizens concerned about environmental issues. Members create teams to compete in a series of contests—there have been 111 to date—in which thousands of proposals were submitted on how to address pressing issues related to climate change. With 120,000 members Climate CoLab has since grown into the world’s largest crowdsourcing platform for developing climate change solutions.
Under the new arrangement, CCI will continue its work in developing innovative approaches for applying collective intelligence to tackle climate change and other sustainability challenges. Now, its community members will be able to participate in both Climate CoLab challenges and in the Wazoku Challenge Community, which addresses sustainability-related topics in need of solutions, along with having access to an even larger online, global community and an idea management platform built by Wazoku, InnoCentive’s parent company. By joining forces, Climate CoLab and InnoCentive will combine their communities comprised of CEOs, PhD students, engineers, scientists, entrepreneurs, retired technologists, business leaders, and everyday concerned citizens, among others.
“Harnessing crowd creativity is a powerful tool to address the complex challenges we face today,” said Thomas W. Malone, founding director of the CCI and professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management . “Migrating our Climate CoLab community into Wazoku’s global crowd of problem solvers can accelerate the development of solutions that will make for a greener, more sustainable future.”
“Our global clients are increasingly interested in the issue of climate change,” said Simon Hill, CEO of Wazoku. “We’re excited to bring Climate CoLab’s members into our growing Challenge Community. This migration will give our customers and community access to Climate CoLab’s dedicated and skilled members, who have a proven track record of developing creative and actionable solutions. Between us, we have built two incredible superminds—large online communities that have achieved amazing things to help our world. I’m looking forward to what we can do together.”
