HeroX Closes Out 2020 with Milestone Accomplishments, hosted the Wildly Successful Crowdsourcing Campaign with NASA’s Lunar Loo Challenge, and Grown its Partner Network Across the Globe
VANCOUVER, BC, Dec. 23, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — HeroX, the social network for innovation and the world’s leading platform for crowdsourced solutions, today announced several milestone accomplishments despite a year of unprecedented challenges. This year HeroX, whose network matches problem solvers with challenges in need of resolution, achieved headway in its mission of taking crowdsourcing mainstream. Weathering a pandemic that made collaborative problem-solving both necessary and logistically difficult, HeroX met the moment with record participation and prize-winning innovation and a Partner Program that now spans across the globe.
“This year brought with it once-in-a-century challenges, and we had millions of people at home and online, eager to make a difference,” said Christian Cotichini, CEO of HeroX. “Governments, companies, and communities could turn to the HeroX crowd for cutting-edge solutions, safely tapping into a worldwide network of talent. Problem-solvers accelerated the production of ventilators, designed innovative masks, and made 3D printing templates accessible to those in need. COVID catalyzed crowdsourcing, and it is here to stay: we have seen that it is the most resilient and innovative means of problem solving out there.”
Homebase to a network of millions of solvers across the world, with over 450 Challenges from individuals to large companies and organizations, HeroX is a bridge between untapped talent and seemingly intractable problems. HeroX provides the platform for individuals, companies, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations to create challenges that reach the widest possible pool of potential problem solvers. HeroX invites the mad geniuses, the misfit tinkerers, the undiscovered experts, and the out-of-the-box thinkers, without excluding anyone based on their location, background, or credentials. HeroX has a singular purpose: breakthrough innovation.
Founded by three titans, HeroX was developed to democratize crowdsourcing: Cotichini is a serial entrepreneur and recognized leader in the crowdsourcing and open-innovation industry; Peter Diamandis is the futurist and the founder of XPRIZE; and Emily Fowler, is the intuit and the CEO of Purpose Ventures. They shared a common vision: offer sizable rewards for sizable problems. They wanted anyone with a problem, no matter how big or small, to be able to tap the collective genius of humanity– even if they didn’t have the millions of dollars required to do so, and they wanted anyone, anywhere, to have access to participate.
Their mission has undoubtedly been a successful one. HeroX has partnered with Boeing, the National Institutes of Health, NBC, lululemon, and NASA, among others, and has awarded over $50M to solvers, sourcing talent from over 180 countries worldwide.
NASA has hosted a multitude of challenges on the HeroX platform, including the wildly successful crowdsourcing challenge, NASA’s Lunar Loo, attracting nearly 20,000 international solvers, and generating over 380 news features across the globe. The challenge produced designs for the first zero-gravity toilet in time for the 2024 visit to the Moon. The challenge also engaged youth through Lunar Loo Jr., which was open to innovators under 18.
Other notable prize competitions include Exploring Hell, designing a rover that can withstand Venus’ hellacious heat, Make America Vote, crowdsourcing solutions to get more people to the polls, and the lululemon Healthier Communities, tapping the crowd for innovative ways to use store locations and community hubs to improve mind, body, and the local community at large.. HeroX also created COVID-19 Central for pandemic-related challenges. Here, problem solvers have been able to share rapidly evolving research and better aggregate the diverse insights of globally distant research teams.
“Providing an outlet to access a public community at scale to receive diverse perspectives outside of their walls will be a big value add,” said Coby Skonord, CEO, Ideawake.
“HeroX is proud to add partners such as Maven, Ideawake, yet2, Brightidea and TAM Hub in 2020,” said Cotichini. “We are living in an increasingly interconnected world, and our combined networks of over 2 million problem solvers is closing the gap between idea generators and idea users. With much of the world still suffering from the impact of COVID-19, there is a new crowd out there, ready to make a difference and dream up the inventive solutions we need for today’s pressing problems.”
