We want to hear your smart ideas for addressing the big environmental issues facing our planet. First, help shape our challenge by telling us about the issues that matter to you. Drawing on your inspiration, we’ll formulate a challenge that uses concepts which are shared, built upon and refined with other community members and our expert panel. Sony and WWF will then select the final idea to be taken through to realisation.  

CHALLENGE PHASES

INSPIRATION (4 weeks starting from 1^st September)

It all starts here. During this initial phase, we want to hear your thoughts and inspirations about an environmental challenge that you think could be addressed by the smarter use of technology. It could be an issue with global relevance, or it could be something that’s especially relevant to your own part of the world.

You can submit your inspirations online as words, photos, videos, stories or drawings. Any medium that helps you express your ideas clearly and passionately is fine. 

SYNTHESIS (1 week offline)

Our Expert Panel will examine all the ideas that have been contributed by the community. From your initial inspirations and feedback, the Panel will synthesize a final challenge brief that will be posted on this site.

CONCEPTING (9 weeks - opens from 11^th October)

And now it’s back over to you. You’re invited to respond to the final brief with your own concepts for solving the environmental challenge posed by our experts.

Your response should make use of the Sony technologies that we’ve chosen to address the challenge in smart, innovative new ways. Your concepts can be simple or complex. They can be big or small. They can be technically detailed or abstract and high level.

We’re not looking for ideas for building environmentally-friendly new products. Instead, we’re looking for unusual, incremental or radical new applications for our nine chosen products –individually, together, or in combination with other products and technologies that we haven’t explicitly included in the challenge. And don’t forget, you can either submit your concepts individually or as part of a team. Just make sure to submit them no later than on Sunday December 12^th.

If you don’t have an idea yourself, you can build on the ones submitted by others. As part of our community you’re welcome to applaud, comment on, refine or mash-up other people’s concepts. It’s all about sharing inspiration and harnessing the power of open innovation. Absolutely everyone can make a contribution: it’s your own thoughts, ideas and creativity that really matter here.

EVALUATION (4 weeks starting from 14^th December)

Up to 30 of the best concepts will then be taken forward for assessment and evaluation by community members and our Expert Panel. The experts will evaluate these shortlisted concepts, based on their potential wider impact on the environment: they’ll also consider their feasibility for realisation.

Just as importantly, we want to hear what you think about everyone else’s ideas. Tell the community which ideas you like the best. Which are the most elegant, the most practical, the most beneficial or the most technically viable? Which ones have the most exciting potential to really make a positive impact on the health of our planet?

REALISATION (January onwards)

The final concept will be selected by the expert panel and announced on 11^th January 2011. Next, we’ll take this winning idea and move it forward to the ‘proof of concept’ stage – perhaps as a white paper, a technical abstract or even a simple working model or prototype. As creator of the winning idea, you’ll be invited to work alongside Sony’s engineers and develop your concept further together with other community members who have contributed to the idea.

When the project is completed, we’ll release all the intellectual property (that’s the know-how behind the winning concept and its realisation) into the public domain. We believe that it’s the fairest and most efficient way to harness the power of your original ideas for the good of our planet.

That also means that Sony won’t commercialise or profit directly in any way from your concepts. What really matters is the potential of this community’s collective inspiration to build an enabling framework for positive change.

See full Challenge Rules here