Education & Research | 30 Oct 2009 :
As part of Dublin Innovation week, Trinity College's Science Gallery hosted a Systematic Innovation Challenge aiming to provide students with the tools to help structure the innovation process.
The event involved three teams representing multi-national tech companies Intel, IBM and Google, and one team of students from the TCD-UCD Innovation Alliance. Their challenge was to outline how innovation could help create the smart economy, with the resulting ideas to be presented to the Government Taskforce for Innovation.
To address the challenge, teams used PRIZM to "gamestorm" ideas against the clock. PRIZM is a world first in systematic innovation: a game, a method and a tool, which streamlines the way people ask questions so that the right problems to solve are identified in the first place. It then produces hundreds of ideas per hour and shortens the time needed to find new and useful solutions. PRIZM also improves communication, teamwork
and decision-making.
The ideas presented at the end of the day included the creation of a chief technology officer for Ireland, to ensure that society could quickly shift focus towards developments in technology. A national pipeline process for innovation was also suggested, to manage the development of both people and products.
Another proposal looked at ways to incentivise teleworking, to remove people from commuting and to reduce energy consumption. Ireland's potential as a world leader in tidal energy was also examined.
Intel received the award for the Best Idea on the day. Reacting to the award, Intel's global director of IT innovation Prof Martin Curley said, "The whole exercise shows that innovation is something that can be systematically nurtured and managed rather than just occurring through luck and serendipity. If Ireland is to emerge stronger from the current crisis, disciplined and focussed innovation thinking and practice will be crucially important."
IBM received the award for Most Number of Ideas.