Case Study: GE Harnesses Open Innovation to Smarten Power Grid Technology with Brightidea

GE Harnesses Open Innovation To Make Power Grid Technology Smarter

GE used Brightidea’s cloud-based innovation management solution to run its Ecomagination Challenge, seeking a smarter way to crowdsource ideas for power grid technology. The challenge website, built on Brightidea’s WebStorm software, gave participants an easy way to submit, vote on, and collaborate around ideas, while GE also used social and mobile features to drive engagement.

Brightidea helped GE streamline idea routing and evaluation with Switchboard, sending proposals to GE experts and partner VC firms for review. The result was a highly visible, well-organized innovation contest with strong participation, interactive leaderboards, and thorough vetting of ideas; Foundation Capital’s Steve Vassallo noted he had “never seen that many ideas processed with such due diligence.”

GE