Enel launches crowdsourcing campaigns for open data smart city solutions

Multinational energy provider Enel has launched two crowdsourcing campaigns to find ideas for new smart city solutions based on open data.

It will use the InnoCentive Open Innovation Marketplace network of almost 500,000 expert problem-solvers, comprised of engineers, PhD students, CEOs, start-ups, scale-ups, scientists and business leaders around the world for contributions to help reshape the global energy market and drive innovation in areas such as renewables and sustainability.

Specific challenges

Enel is running two specific challenges:

The New Smart City solutions enabled by Open Data challenge, which closes on 10 September, is looking for ways of leveraging open data to create or improve smart cities, with a focus on ideas around:

• public lighting
• architectural lighting
• urban mobility
• city analysis.

The ReShape: a global call for the energy transition challenge, which closes on 30 September, is focused on transforming innovation into future solutions for the global energy landscape and the new needs emerging around the world. This can include digitalisation, automation, and remote working processes, and Enel is seeking ideas from solvers, start-ups, and SMEs on challenges in six categories:

• applying automation to renewable plant construction
• ensuring rapid sanitisation in field operations and external spaces
• increasing employees’ safety and ensuring correct distancing and traceability
• providing remote site visits for Enel X’s industrial and residential customers
• fostering Enel customers’ digital experience
• improving Enel’s end-user profiling.

“The partnership between Enel and Innocentive once more testifies the importance of crowdsourcing as a powerful and effective way of gathering and developing ideas,” said Ernesto Ciorra, Enel’s chief innovability officer.

He added: “Enel, as a world leader in energy transition, innovates to make itself more sustainable and resilient, and to reach this goal we need the best minds to contribute with their cutting-edge concepts.”

“The partnership between Enel and Innocentive once more testifies the importance of crowdsourcing as a powerful and effective way of gathering and developing ideas”

Thanks to InnoCentive and the energy company’s own crowdsourcing platform, openinnovability.com, Enel has collected more than 5,000 proposals from over 100 countries, remarking the Group’s commitment in creating value for its stakeholders by growing new ideas and encouraging cooperation.”

Enel first partnered with InnoCentive in 2015 to run challenges that can help the company deliver operational efficiency and industrial growth and ultimately help in its achievement of UN Sustainability Development Goals.

In July 2020, InnoCentive joined forces with idea management firm Wazoku, creating the innovation platform and community. InnoCentive has a global network of solvers and claims to have a 75 per cent success rate in solving challenges on behalf of its global clients.

“The collective brainpower and expertise of the InnoCentive solvers can deliver solutions to the most technical of challenges,” said Simon Hill, CEO, Wazoku. “These Enel challenges can be transformative for society and sustainability and it’s a really interesting campaign for the solvers to be a part of.”

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