The team has repaired 474 phones, saving the 31st FW $106,176 to this date with this new technique.
Airmen can submit their ideas through the IdeaScale website. IdeaScale allows Airmen to share ideas, critique submissions, and up vote the most promising solutions. The Airmen with the most game-changing and up-voted ideas then compete at the culminating event.
The US Air Force's new AFWERX technology accelerator is now seeing several of its projects mature into viable prototypes that are being passed over for operational testing.
AFWERX announced the second winner of its Spark Tank competition in February 2019. The competition, which is the culminating event of the crowdsourcing platform IdeaScale, brings forward new ideas to top military officials including bringing integrated communication to respirators and additions to airdrop mechanisms to improve their reliability.
Spark Tank is an annual competition where Airmen pitch innovative ideas to top Air Force leadership and a panel of industry experts.
To support Spark Tank, AFWERX launched a crowdsourcing platform called IdeaScale which allows airmen to share ideas, critique submissions, and upvote the most promising solutions. The Airmen with the most game changing and upvoted ideas then compete at the culminating event, Spark Tank.
CEO Bernard Tyson spoke about the role innovation is playing in the company's big strategic goals around preventive health.
In an effort to cut through the bureaucratic process that can hamstring innovation at a large company like Kaiser, Tyson and his team created a program called Challenge Possible soliciting solutions from employees to big problems like mental health, community health and personal health. The challenge yielded nearly 2,900 responses.
The goal is to enable Airmen to accomplish their mission better, faster, cheaper and more innovatively
The Air Force Installation and Mission Support Center Innovation Office is launching a program in the new year to help Airmen implement their innovative ideas. Full-time innovation specialists with the innovation office will collaborate with Airmen to refine their ideas. AFIMSC will fund some directly; compete others through the $600 million Small Business Innovation and Research Program; and take the three best ideas to compete in an official AFWERX Challenge in 2019, each funded with $200,000 to connect with global experts, start-ups and venture capitalists to prototype and implement.
What Makes You Effective and Most Happy When Leading Others on Your Team?
"I love using the IdeaScale platform because it allows individuals to share any ideas they have without regard for its immediate reception in a room full of people."
Managers can use IdeaScale to ask employees for innovative ideas on topics ranging from specific product modifications to how the company can improve. If a suggestion receives a certain number of votes, it passes on to the next stage. Once an idea is selected as a project, IdeaScale’s software identifies team members’ roles, tracks progress and outlines next steps, enhancing accountability and efficiency.
IdeaScale is a new community platform for discussion
An interesting development from Yamaha, perhaps fueled by the approach Behringer have been taking of late - which encouraged users to tell them what they want in a synth.
Talk to people on the ground. For modern-day explorers, this means investing in customer analytics, inclusive data policies and local innovation challenges. Take Water 4 Life, which used Standard Bank's IdeaScale platform to ask people from Africa for practical ideas to combat water scarcity. The result was an influx of submissions consisting of everything from solar-powered water purification systems to ecofriendly bottle showers.
Ginning up ideas isn’t always the hard part in academic innovation. Instead, more and more leaders working on digital initiatives at colleges are finding themselves with a less technical challenge: strategic communications.
