Case Study: Oak Ridge National Laboratory achieves 10 market-ready innovations with IdeaScale

Oak Ridge National Laboratory Taking Ten New Technologies to Market

Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), the Department of Energy’s largest science and energy lab, needed a faster, more inclusive way to surface and commercialize energy‑efficiency technologies. The challenge was to broaden the pool of innovators—especially small entrepreneurs—while ensuring timely moderation, rigorous technical vetting, and clear paths to industry partnerships and market adoption.

ORNL launched JUMP, an online crowdsourcing community with a five‑phase "call for innovation" process, defined community roles (moderators, technical judges, industry partners, innovators) and a strict moderation workflow (non‑technical screening within one business day, community voting, structured judge evaluations). In two years JUMP delivered 13 calls with 170 valid ideas, 816 votes and 172 comments, engaged 1,322 registered users and a 2,000+ mailing list, secured 12 industry partners and produced 10 winning ideas primed for advancement — accelerating collaboration and pathways to market.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory