Examples

Projects, initiatives, areas of endeavour, etc. that exemplify open. You are encouraged to both add categories and specific projects / examples. We will build on this at FTF / Open Everything events. Please add any you come across, don't be shy! 

• Open source software (and free software) - collaborative created and maintained software built on open code
• Open content - music, books and other media that are free to use, share, remix and improve
  • Eg. Creative Commons - licenses for open content
    • CC licensed
      
  • Vast body of Public Domain content (audio, video, words) 
  • C-Shirt by Japanese media-wiki company Nota: Remixable T-shirts by Mobile Phone
    
• Open standards - data, communcation protocols and file formats that allow free exchange of knowledge.
  

• Open education - content, technology and teaching methods build around open principles.

  • Open educational resources - learning content that is free to use, edit, remix and improve
    
    • Eg > Connexions - platform for authoring and sharing open learning materials
    • Eg > Flatworld Knowledge - commercial open textbook community, and delivery service
    • Eg > Kids Open Dictionary - a completely open PD-licensed dictionary that can generate glossaries for use in a variety of other projects
      
• Open philanthropy - applying princples like transparency, community and sharing to creating a better world
  • Eg > Shuttleworth Foundation - uses open philanthropy approach to improve education in South Africa
    
• Open architecture - building designs that can be freely used, shared and improved
  
• Open elections - building consensus on candidates, policies, plans and legislation, using an electoral system that sits outside of government and beyond the control of parties
• Eg > Votorola - software for hosting open elections, with beta trials planned for Toronto in 2008
  

• Open business models - examples of how real SMBs have harnessed the power of open
• Open information (as in; freedom of access to)
  • Open geographic information
    • Canadian geodata with a permissive license from GeoBase.
    • American geodata with a public domain license from US Gov't.
  • Open geographic information tools
    • Open tools for use with you geodata from OpenStreetMap.
      • Working example at OpenStreetMap.
      • Working example at Information Freeway.
• Open IDentification (get your wallet out of the silo)
• Open domains
  

• law is the oldest "open source" project,
  
• science has historically been open to Open,
  
• medicine works best when freely sharing knowledge, etc.

• Open innovation - drawing the best ideas from outside the organization to enhance innovation around product, service and strategy
  
• Changemakers, an Ashoka initiative, is building an "open source" community using competition to find the best social solutions; their trademarked slogan is "open sourcing social solutions™"
• Also known as "crowdsourcing", "distributed cocreation"
• Open government - tapping creative communities and employing participatory methods to co-create government policy, plans and reinventing governance
  • Including open policy making. See the NZ Police Act Wiki
    
• Open Hardware - those enlightened designers, developers and manufacturers of hardware who have realized that open designs enable the broadest deployment and development community
  

• linuxbios

• Open Graphics project

• OpenMoko

  VIA Technologies

• g specs

  • Also, reproducable open hardward like the RepRap 3D printer
    
• Open Art
  • Collaborative/cumulative art (a la Wikipedia) 
    • Drawball - online graffitti ball that anyone can edit/contribute to.
    • The Bubble Project - bubble signs posted on ads on the street where people can write messages
  • Process
    • Open exhibitions - there is a group in London that finds abandoned space to host a temporary exhibition where anyone is invited to put up their photographic work - can't remember the name, anyone know?
      

• Open Salad - a community salad bar at the Centre for Social Innovation.
• Open pricing - those charging for services who pledge to be transparent about pricing and costs
• Nonprofit Technology Professionals' Principles/Code of Conduct (see #10)
  
• Open project management - directly involving clients in the project management process (transparency)
• E.g. both consultant and client using Basecamp

We really want to make this list better.Please add stuff you know about. Also, if you have ideas on how to improve the design of the map (we really just started making a list) please email gang [et] openeverything.net. We'd love help driving this part of the project.

Needing catagorisation in the above schema (please help;-)

99designs

“Need something designed? 99designs connects clients needing design work such as logo designs, business cards or web sites to a thriving community of 15,866 talented designers.”

Arduino

“An open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It’s intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments.

The boards can be assembled by hand or purchased preassembled; the software can be downloaded for free. The hardware reference designs (CAD files) are available under an open-source license, you are free to adapt them to your needs.”

Auroramixer

“USB powered multichannel mixer in a typical dj form factor… aurora is an open source project. below is everything you need to make one for yourself. the intent of publishing the files is to generate interest in the community, not to make you rich. we are interested in seeing how you use aurora, feel free to post any mods in the forum.”

Belize Open Source

Belize Open Source - Sustainable Development promotes environmentally and socially sustainable development. We invite people to collaborate on an open source approach to plan, implement, and participate in a land-based learning and community outreach center and working farm on our 40 acre property in northwestern Belize.

* construct goat shelter
* Establish survey corners and property lines
* provide design for small building: shower/toilet/mudroom/adjacent visitor/office space
* Update business and project planning documents

Buglabs

“The modular device offered by Buglabs is, at its core, a full-featured Linux computer known appropriately enough as a ‘BUG’. Complete with all the abilities of a PC, the BUG allows budding computing enthusiasts to play hobbyist engineer so they can create a device with their own specifications in mind. A clever idea, considering most consumer products always seem to be lacking that one killer feature. Also a great remedy for those who tend to dream of how they would have built any given device ‘better’ or differently.” (http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osr...nt.php/3700366)

Callooh

“A free hardware CNC router project, intending to be comparable to the Roland Modella in accuracy and ability, but far cheaper and have a larger working area.”

Cambrian House (Now VenCorps ?)

“A web-based community owned business that combines the principles of wisdom of crowds and peer production to identify and develop sticky software ideas. The company’s stated mission is to discover and commercialize software ideas through the wisdom and participation of crowds.

Anyone can submit a software idea for the crowd to rate. Other users vote on the ideas in an attempt to identify those with the most potential. The best ideas are then selected to be market tested. Contributors whose ideas are selected to be built receive a share of the profits in the form of royalty points if the idea succeeds in the marketplace. Individual contributors can also receive royalty points by completing specific tasks to help develop ideas into products.

While it has been speculated that potential weaknesses in the model may include the challenge of convincing users to read and rate a rapidly growing pool of ideas, the relatively low quality of many ideas, the management complexity of distributed development, and the large number of duplicate submissions, these weaknesses have been successfully overcome by other companies including InnoCentive, IStockphoto, and t-shirt design company Threadless.

On May 12, 2008 TechCrunch reported [10] that after repeated attempts to find additional investment capital (on top of the 7.75MM already invested), the assets of Cambrian House were sold to Spencer TraskVentures for an undisclosed amount. Cambrian House’s CEO, Michael Sikorsky, commented that “Indeed, our model failed”.”

CoCreate (CAD)

The CoCreate product family is a complete design environment with 3D and 2D CAD, integrated product data management (PDM), and collaboration software. CoCreate provides speed, flexibility, and responsiveness to change for customers facing short design cycles, one-off product designs, or companies demanding a lightweight design process:

* Lightweight design process driven by an explicit approach to 3D CAD
* Fastest way to create and modify 3D designs
* Flexible approach for unexpected and radical changes to 3D designs or design teams, and flexible for working with multi-source CAD data
* Scalable environment for all sizes of companies and products

* Achieve faster design cycles by leveraging the strengths of an explicit approach to 3D product development
* Confront unpredictable or radical design change with flexibility
* Work with multi-source CAD data as easily as if you created it yourself
* Eliminate resource bottlenecks with the flexibility for anyone to pick up designs and carry them forward
* Automate processes and eliminate errors with ownership, revision, and state control
* Provide open and controlled access with status updates and notifications
* Leverage existing part and assembly designs with Search and Where Used, to speed product development
* Orchestrate teamwork with effective management of 3D to 2D associativity, part comparisons, and engineering-related documents for co-located or distributed teams
* Load product designs using lightweight models, ideal for the design of large assemblies and complex products

Chumby

A “friendly household Internet appliance. Chumby is a concept based on the belief that some people out there would be thrilled to have access to the Internet without the need for more traditional devices. Chumby provides the end user a unique means of accessing online maps, tracking auctions – nearly anything you might want from the Internet. For about $200, this widget-using Net appliance provides you with all the Internet you’d ever want, even from the strangest locations.

What makes Chumby different from any other Internet appliance running created widgets is that it allows users themselves to create widgets to further extend Chumby’s functionality. Once Chumby has been connected to a LAN, it uses a user-defined ‘widget playlist’ as an interactive view screen. It’s something like you might find with Apple’s Dashboard feature in OS X, but on a less powerful computing appliance.” (http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osr...nt.php/3700366)

ClickWorkers

“a small NASA experimental project that used public volunteers (clickworkers) for scientific tasks that require human perception and common sense, but not a lot of scientific training. Clickworkers could work when and for how long they chose, doing routine analysis that would normally require months of work by scientists or graduate students. The web site and database were created and are being maintained by one engineer working part time…” - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clickworkers

crowdspring.com

1. Post a creative project.
2. Watch the world contribute ideas.
3. Chose the one you like.

Daisy MP3 Player

Open source MP3 player, at http://www.makezine.com/daisy/

“Unlike the more consumer-friendly Chumby, Daisy opens itself up to new revenue possibilities by allowing the builder the opportunity to build the device into a customized appliance. Even though this is not likely the goal of the project itself, it does present the possibility of customized MP3 players for a variety of enterprise applications. Entrepreneurs would likely start out by targeting industries that need access to a low cost, custom-built music player than can be implemented to users’ specs.” (http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osr...nt.php/3700366)

Dell Idea Storm

“The name is a take-off on the word “brainstorm” and it is our way of building an online community that brings all of us closer to the creative side of technology by allowing you to share ideas and collaborate with one another. The goal is for you, the customer, to tell Dell what new products or services you’d like to see Dell develop. We hope this site fosters a candid and robust conversation about your ideas. Our commitment is to listen to your input and ideas to improve our products and services, and the way we do business.” - http://www.ideastorm.com/about

“launched by Dell on February 16, 2007 to allow Dell “to gauge which ideas are most important and most relevant to” the public.

After registering, users are able to add articles, promote them, demote them and comment on them. Articles can also be demoted, and a “vote half life” system[2] is used to stop older ideas which are no longer receiving votes from appearing on the popular ideas page. Dell also modifies the half live vote to prop up ideas which they feel need more exposure, as they did for the poll asking which topics Micheal Dell would be more important to cover at the 2007 LinuxWorld conference.

… Dell continues to remove comments (besides comments which are in bad taste) which leads to confusion as the thought process of the comments is left disjointed and nonsensical at times.” - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dell_IdeaStorm

designbreak.org

“a website specifically for collaborating on science, social and engineering projects with a global and humanitarian focus. designbreak.org is run by a 501(c)(3) non-profit, designbreak, which is dedicated to providing the support these projects need to go from internet collaborations, to a real impact on the world.”

draytonweissenfels.com - crowdsourcing

“We connect ideas and innovation to industry. We are the Canadian Partner to the largest and most active technology transfer marketplace in the world (Yet2.com) The marketplace is made up of most of the fortune 500 and over 140 000 registered users worldwide with at least 1500 deals in process at any given time.

We leverage our relationships to meet your objectives. We help shorten your time to market, we assist you in generating revenue streams from your underutilized IP
and work to connect your technology solutions with innovation seekers.

Drayton Weissenfels will work with you to drastically increase your distribution channels and expand your R&D exponentially and globally allowing you time to refine your business model and core competences.”
[edit]

Fab@Home (http://www.fabathome.org/wiki/index....itle=Main_Page)

a project dedicated to making and using fabbers - machines that can make almost anything, right on your desktop. This website provides everything you need to know in order to build or buy your own simple fabber, and to use it to print three dimensional objects. The hardware designs and software on this website are free and open-source. Once you have your own fabber, you can also download and print various items, try out new materials, or upload and share your own projects. Advanced users can modify and improve the fabber itself.

…A fabber can allow you to explore new designs, email physical objects to other fabber owners, and most importantly - set your ideas free. Just as MP3s, iPods and the Internet have freed musical talent, we hope that blueprints and fabbers will democratize innovation.

FOSSBazaar

“An open source community of technology and industry leaders who are collaborating to accelerate adoption of free and open source software in the enterprise. Specifically, FOSSBazaar aims to:

* Expand upon the open source value proposition for a richer, safer, less expensive, better overall IT experience.
* Focus on timely issues such as license management and support as open source software matures and is adopted more widely in IT environments.”

GitHub (http://github.com/)

Not only is Git the new hotness, it’s a fast, efficient, distributed version control system ideal for the collaborative development of software.

GitHub is the easiest (and prettiest) way to participate in that collaboration: fork projects, send pull requests, monitor development, all with ease.
How does it work?

Get up and running in seconds by forking a project, pushing an existing repository, or starting fresh.

GitHub was written for public, open source projects and private, proprietary codes — if you use Git, GitHub is for you.

Kaltura

Kaltura – The 1st Open-Source Platform for Video Creation, Management, Interaction, and Collaboration

Kaltura’s open source platform enables any site to seamlessly and cost–effectively integrate advanced interactive rich–media functionalities, including video searching, uploading, importing, editing, annotating, remixing, and sharing. Kaltura’ goal is to bring interactive video to every site and to create the world’s largest distributed video network.
Adding a Social Element to Online Video

Dubbed by many as “Wiki meets YouTube™”, Kaltura’s platform includes unique collaboration functionalities that allow groups of users to ‘lean forward’ while creating and consuming rich media together. This active collaboration increases user engagement by adding a social element to the online video experience, and creates enhanced monetization and advertising opportunities for authors and publishers.

The Kaltura Network transcends the boundaries of individual websites by aggregating content across its member sites into the largest repository of sharable and remixable rich-media content. The network provides publishers of all sizes new syndication opportunities, and enables them to gain access to third-party web services – such as DVD burning, professional video editing, and high-CPM advertising opportunities that are only attainable due to the network’s economies-of-scale.
Our Customers and Partners

Kaltura recently partnered with the Wikimedia Foundation to provide collaborative video functionality to Wikipedia’s 207 Million unique visitors. Other customers integrating the platform include media companies, social networks, UGC sites, video sharing sites, major brands, non-profits, bloggers, enterprises and more. Just about any site can boost its users’ engagement and monetization using the Kaltura platform.

Koolu

Our goal is to help stimulate new, sustainable, Eco-friendly wealth by lowering the barrier to access of inexpensive low carbon footprint solutions for communications and computing for 7 billion people. By increasing the success of starting and running a small to medium sized business that represents 80% ofthe economy in new growth markets through local partnerships and to create the largest positive social and economic change possible starting with our version of a Google phone/ computer. It’s like a One Lap Top Per Child ($100 Lap Top) project for Small to Medium sized business but in the form of a mobile phone/ tablet computer by addressing Economic Value Add.

Koolus business model is to provide a stable port of Android optimize for Google Apps to enable GPhones to come to market.

Kluster.com

By offering a set of sophisticated project management tools, Kluster aims to enable crowds to develop new concepts. The system is currently being demonstrated at the TED conference in Monterey, where the event’s attendees will be able to work together to create a product prototype in 72 hours. (Rapid prototyping machines and a team of modellers are standing by.) Kluster wasn’t developed just for tangible objects though. It can also be used to create brand identities, plan events or for any other project that would benefit from crowd input.

Granted—Kluster isn’t the first venture to create a platform for crowdsourcing. Cambrian House and CrowdSpirit both operate in this space. The main advantage Kluster offers is incentive: a highly developed system of rewards. Members can earn ‘Watts’ (the local currency) by helping solve problems or suggesting refinements or enhancements. They can also invest their Watts, and can cash out if a project is purchased by a third party. Investments grow along with a project’s value, and a member’s stake is based on how much he or she has contributed. As explained by Kluster: “Watts encourage users to participate and stay on target, keeping the community productive.”

Anyone can initiate a project, and Kluster claims to use complex algorithms to let the brightest ideas surface, not just the loudest ones. Several companies have signed up to engage Kluster’s community and tap into their collective creativity. In the best case scenario, the crowds will help brands create new hit products. At the very least, using Kluster will let them interact with their most dedicated customers. Smaller companies, meanwhile, can use Kluster as an instant research and development lab, enlisting (and rewarding!) the community to help ‘flesh out’ ideas that they might otherwise not be able to develop. One to experiment with!

LIFECar / RiverSimple

Seeking the benefits of synergies in design of new cars leads us to the Open Source Software movement and its dictum that “Given enough eyeballs, any bug is shallow. ” Debugging software is much more trying than writing it; the open source process diminishes that difficulty, as it allows thousands of people to survey all the code—the whole system….

LittleBits

“an opensource library of discrete electronic components pre-assembled in tiny circuit boards. Just as Legos allow you to create complex structures with very little engineering knowledge, littleBits are simple, intuitive, space-sensitive blocks that make prototyping with sophisticated electronics a matter of snapping small magnets together. With a growing number of available modules, littleBits aims to move electronics from late stages of the design process to its earliest ones, and from the hands of experts, to those of artists, makers and designers.”

Open Architecture Network (Architecture for Humanity)

http://www.architectureforhumanity.org/

“a 501(c)(3) charitable organization that seeks architectural solutions to humanitarian crisis and brings design services to communities in need. We believe that where resources and expertise are scarce, innovative, sustainable and collaborative design can make a difference.”

In 2007 Architecture for Humanity launched the Open Architecture Network, a collaborative online resource and project management tool for those dedicated to improving the built environment. But it’s not just for professional architects–community leaders, nonprofits, technology partners, educators, materials specialists, healthcare workers, and others collaborate and share their expertise on the network.

opendefinition.org

OpenEEG

Many people are interested in what is called neurofeedback or EEG biofeedback training, a generic mental training method which makes the trainee consciously aware of the general activity in the brain… Unfortunately, commercial EEG devices are generally too expensive to become a hobbyist tool or toy.

The OpenEEG project is about making plans and software for do-it-yourself EEG devices available for free (as in GPL). It is aimed toward amateurs who would like to experiment with EEG. However, if you are a pro in any of the fields of electronics, neurofeedback, software development etc., you are of course welcome to join the mailing-list and share your wisdom.

Commercial and clinical EEG devices must live up to certain standards. This is good, since it provides a measure of protection for a user or patient. Obviously, we cannot provide such guarantees, as the OpenEEG project consists of a loosely knit group of people from all over the world. Thus, it is not an organization in the legal sense (especially since we do not have any money).

OpenMoko

OpenMoko’s CAD files are available in Pro Engineer format, released under a creative commons license

“Freeing up the source allows people to invent things we couldn’t have imagined,” said Mosher. “… People look at the platform, and say ‘Hey, I can do something with this.’” - Steve Mosher, speaking to Wired: http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/0...-your-own.html

From http://openmoko.com/about-index.html:

Thirty spokes share the wheel’s hub
It is the center hole that makes it useful.
Shape clay into a vessel
It is the space within that makes it useful.
Cut doors and windows for a room
It is the holes which make it useful.
Therefore benefit comes from what is there
Usefulness from what is not there.

–??

“Openmoko is open. Open to life, desire, function, and simple beauty. Never closed, perfect, or complete. An empty vessel, ready to be filled with your ideas.

We run our company’s internal development like an open source project: transparent to the world. The same tools that we use for source code revision control, bug tracking, and communication are publicly available at Openmoko.org.”

Openeur.com info[at]openeur.com

…a blog devoted to the topic open innovation in relation with entrepreneurship and which should become a hub for all related topics. The team of openeur is firmly convinced, that the opening of the innovation process especially for new entrepreneurs as for lead users will revolutionize the area of interactive creation of value and therefore the way we are organizing economy on the whole.

Openeur is provided by Johannes Heinze and Steffen Hoellinger, two students of Corporate Management & Economics at Zeppelin University Friedrichshafen, situated at Lake Constanze, Germany.

Johannes Heinze & Steffen Hoellinger
Zeppelin University
Am Seemooser Horn 20
88045 Friedrichshafen
Germany

Openp2pdesign.org

“This website is intended to be a place for meeting, discussion and sharing of knowledge about how design can face succesfully the complexity of society and its problems, especially sustainability…how service design can be used to co-design organizational forms that draws some features of Open Source and P2P communities (or Open Peer-to-Peer Communities).”

open-organizations.org

“The structures that organizations typically use for decision-making are closed: individuals are unaccountable, abuses of power are hard to prevent and knowledge is hoarded. The goal of this project is to explain how to set up and maintain transparent, accountable and truly participative communities. The desire for open organizations stems from a widespread dissatisfaction not only with the formal power structures found in governments and corporations, but also with the informal structures found in many voluntary and activist groups.”

Open Research

“Open Source brought the software industry out onto the public Internet. Now it’s time to do the same for academia.”

Peer-to-Patent Project

On June 15, 2007, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) opened the patent examination process for online public participation for the first time. With the consent of the inventor, the Peer-to-Patent: Community Patent Review pilot, developed by the New York Law School Institute for Information Law and Policy in cooperation with the USPTO, enables the public to submit prior art and commentary relevant to the claims of pending patent applications in Computer Architecture, Software, and Information Security (TC2100). This historic initiative connects an open network of community input to the legal decision-making process.

Peer-to-Patent involves 1) review and discussion of posted patent applications, 2) research to locate prior art references 3) uploading prior art references relevant to the claims, 4) annotating and evaluating submitted prior art, and 5) top ten references, along with commentary, forwarded to the USPTO. The goal of this pilot is to prove that organized public participation can improve the quality of issued patents.

Anyone in the public can participate as a reviewer, a patent application facilitator, and by sharing information about the pilot with others. Inventors can submit a qualified patent application for open review. Public participation is crucial to demonstrating the value of openness and making the case for greater USPTO accountability to the technical community. A successful pilot will also make a case for expanding to other subject matter.
—

Volume 72 Number 1790, Friday, October 20, 2006, Page 682, ISSN 1522-4325, Analysis & Perspective, Prior Art

Manny W. Schecter, Open Collaboration Is Medicine for Our Ailing Patent System

Litigation of invalid patents drains the economy of resources that would be better spent on innovation. One way to improve patent quality is gather public submissions of prior art that patent examiners might otherwise overlook. The author discusses an open source project for collaborative peer review of prior art that is already underway, providing responses to concerns that have been raised about such a system.

Schecter is associate general counsel, Intellectual Property Law for IBM Corp., Armonk, N.Y. He can be reached at schecter@us.ibm.com. Beth Noveck of New York Law School and several of Schecter’s colleagues at IBM contributed to this paper.

Pledgebank.com (from MySociety.org)

Mechanism for engaging many people in a project… overcoming the ‘i would but nobody else is’ barrier. However, this doesn’t seem to lend itself to design / hardware (perhaps as it is not ‘marketed’ in that direction). The nearest pledge to being relevant in design is “ameepledge”..

“I will add the energy consumption details of at least five electrical items in my house to the AMEE climate change database but only if 500 other people will do the same (or better).” — Tom Steinberg, Director, mySociety, Deadline to sign up by: 1st October 2008. 25 people have signed up, 475 more needed (14th July 08)

..as this is an example of mass collaboration for collecting data that is relevant to designers (in this case energy/CO2 data).

Imaginatik.com

the leader and pioneer in Idea Management

InnoCentive

“has emerged as an innovative solution to solve scientific conundrums faced by organizations. Established in 2001 (same time as Wikipedia), InnoCentive bills itself as “the first online, incentive-based initiative created specifically for the global R&D community”. It is built on a unique ‘Seeker’ and ‘Solver’ model that brings together scientists from over 175 countries to solve scientific problems. ‘Seekers’ such as Procter & Gamble, Boeing, Pittsburgh Plate & Glass and the Rockefeller Foundation pay annual fees to access InnoCentive’s network of scientists. Scientists (or ‘Solvers’), offer solutions … and the winning solvers are rewarded. A current InnoCentive seeker is Prize4Life, a non-profit group focused on research for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s disease), offering $1 million for a biomarker measuring progression of the disease. The InnoCentive advantage is that it opens problem-solving to a global scientific workforce and fuels collaborative problem solving. The power is in numbers – thousands of scientists can participate in the problem solving process, a scale that any one organization can hardly reach with its in-house R&D environment.” - http://anthonygold.blogspot.com/2007...aboration.html

“InnoCentive is the leader in Prize-Based Open Innovation. We are the only provider of a complete end-to-end open innovation solution. No matter where you are in the life cycle of your product or service development, InnoCentive has the expertise to solve your toughest problems. Tap into our community of over 135,000 Solvers – smart, creative minds from around the world - to tackle problems big and small, in engineering and design, business and entrepreneurship,life sciences, chemistry, computer science, math, and physics.

By joining the open innovation revolution, your institution not only increases its research and
development capacity significantly, but also reduces risk and exposure to costly research failure.

InnoCentive controls access to valuable information belonging to Seekers and Solvers by using binding agreements and private Project Rooms. Solvers must sign a binding confidentiality agreement before accessing the full project details.” Innocentive website and public materials.

Instructables

Example of Idea proposal that others are helping to substantiate: http://www.instructables.com/id/Idea...Oscilloscope./

Media X @ Stanford Institute

They’re very interested in remote collaboration using digital tools. Recent workshops have included “Engaging Global Teams Across Distance, Time and Culture” and “Workgroup Protocols for Networked Teams”.

NETGEAR open source wireless router

“the open wireless router platform of choice for serious developers and newer users alike. Flexible and powerful, the WGR614L can support many popular third party firmware applications”

* Open-source router for Linux developers and open-source experts
* Comprehensive Open-source User Guide available for developers /upload/product/wgr614l/mor_logo.jpg
* Open-source community website with forums, blogs and downloads at myopenrouter.com

Open Gender

opengender is a self-archiving open access project offering free access to research on the cultural politics of gender and sexuality in new forms of media and cyberspace. It is also developing women/queer-friendly free software guides, workshops or other materials.

Open Source Applications Foundation

OSAF is a non-profit organization working on Chandler Project, a Note-to-Self Organizer designed for personal and small-group task management and calendaring. Chandler consists of a cross-platform desktop application (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux), the Chandler Hub Sharing Service and Chandler Server.

RedDesignMe

RedesignMe aims to improve the products and services around us by collectively rethinking bad products into better products and good ideas into great ideas. The website has two sections: Design Critique and RDM Challenges.

With Design Critique, RedesignMe collects the best product improvements based on your input and communicates that back to the original product designers & producers. RedesignMe contacts the companies behind the products in question to show them the feedback and encourages them to reply directly to the users and eventually fix the problems. RedesignMe also encourages the companies to work more closely with their end-users by setting up RDM Challanges.

Nice, but why would a company do that?
Because their competitors are doing it too! No seriously, more and more companies are recognizing that more features or more technology are not the key to better sales figures. More and more companies understand that they have to listen to what their customers are saying. Traditionally, product-usage information simply didn’t get back to the company. And if a company doesn’t know how you experience their products, they can’t really change anything about it, can they? RedesignMe closes the gap between consumers, producers and the design-industry.

How do RDM Challenges work?
RDM Challenges are conceptual or design-driven challenges initiated by companies that want to involve their customers more closely into their product development process. RDM Challenges clearly describe a (design) problem and you, the Redesigner, are rewarded for your feedback through our RDM system. Basically you collect points (RDMs) which you can later convert into prizes in our RDM Shop. Your feedback can be in form of a comment, sketch, set of pictures, mood-board, movie, prototype or total redesign.

The Shared Design Alliance
The Shared Design Alliance (SDA) advocates for and demonstrates the value of sharing the design information contained in physical products, and produces infrastructure to make design sharing and modification easy and efficient. Placing design information in the public domain has many benefits.

Simputer

“self-contained, open hardware handheld computer, designed for use in environments where computing devices such as personal computers are deemed inappropriate. Due to the low cost, it was also deemed appropriate to bring computing power to the developing countries.

The Simputer specifications are released under an open distribution license called the Simputer General Public License or the SGPL. Free software developers are being actively encouraged to port their applications to the Simputer.

The Simputer Trust has licensed two manufacturers to create devices based on the Simputer specifications:” - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simputer

ShelterCentre

Open source, collaborative development of ‘Shelter Standards’, common standards and indicators for stockpiled hot and cold family shelters in humanitarian operations, by incorporating comments made by manufacturers and suppliers, as well as the participants of a sector forum open to humanitarian organisations.

Tekscout.com

“The TekScout Open Innovation Exchange enables companies to post development challenges and an associated reward for solving their challenges in the following areas of science and engineering. Life Science, Chemistry, Math & Computer Science, Physical Science, Engineering & Design, Alternative Energy & Sustainable Products.

UTEK TekScout™ Open Innovation Network is a professional outsource network for scientific development and engineering development. We specialize in outsourced chemistry, outsourced life sciences, outsourced biotechnology, outsourced stem cell research, outsourced engineering, outsourced physical science, outsourced mathematical expertise, outsourced alternative energy projects, outsourced green and sustainable product development, and outsourced computer science development. UTEK’s international scientific marketplace is your source to solve scientific challenges using an open innovation process.”

The Natural Step Framework

In 1989, Swedish scientist Karl-Henrik Robèrt wrote a paper describing the system conditions for sustainability, given the laws of thermodynamics. He sent it to 50 scientists. He asked that they tell him what was wrong with his paper. On version twenty-two Robèrt had consensus on what was to become The Natural Step.

System conditions of sustainability

The Natural Step Framework’s definition of sustainability includes four system conditions (scientific principles) that lead to a sustainable society. These conditions, that must be met in order to have a sustainable society, are as follows:

In a sustainable society, nature is not subject to systematically increasing:

1. concentrations of substances extracted from the Earth’s crust;
2. concentrations of substances produced by society;
3. degradation by physical means and, in that society. . .
4. people are not subject to conditions that systematically undermine their capacity to meet their needs.

ThinkCycle

ThinkCycle is an academic, non-profit initiative, developed and operated by a group of doctoral students at the MIT Media Laboratory, engaged in supporting distributed collaboration towards design challenges among underserved communities and the environment.
ThinkCycle seeks to create a culture of open-source design innovation, with ongoing collaboration among individuals, communities and organizations around the world. It provides a shared online space for designers, engineers, domain experts and stakeholders to discuss, exchange and construct ideas towards sustainable design solutions in critical problem domains.

Topics covered include health, education, energy, environment, community, global action and sustainable living. (via Nik Baerten at Pantopicon)

Threadless.com

“…Submit your [T-Shirt] design for presentation to the Threadless community… Over a period of 7 days, the Threadless community will score and comment on your submission. These scores and comments will help us decide which designs should become the next Threadless tees! If your idea is selected you’ll receive $2,000 in cash…”

Tommelise Clanking Replicator Project

“Tommelise is a bootstrap 3D replicator that you can make with a very few hand tools for about $100-150. Once you’ve built it you can use it to make … more or less anything, including another Tommelise”

TuxPhone

“a project to develop open source (hardware and software) GSM/GPRS cellphone. Our objective is to create an open (in every sense of the word) cellphone platform that is convenient for creating novel applications. For instance, someone could take this reference design and integrate it with a small RFID reader to create a RFID enabled cellphone. Or, for that matter someone come up with a software that finds the cheapest way to make a phone call based on the available connectivity - VOIP or GSM.” - http://www.opencellphone.org/index.p...itle=Main_Page

VIA OpenBook

“free and open laptop reference design from VIA Technologies… announced in 2008. The CAD files for the design are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.” - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VIA_OpenBook

Wikipedia

“Wikipedia is a multilingual, Web-based, free-content encyclopedia project… written collaboratively by volunteers, allowing most of its articles to be edited by nearly anyone with access to the Web site.

Wikipedia’s reliability and accuracy have been questioned. The site has also been criticized for being susceptible to vandalism, for having uneven quality, system bias and inconsistencies, and for favoring consensus over credentials in its editorial process. To address these concerns, Wikipedia has instituted several normative policies and guidelines, such as excluding unverifiable assertions and unpublished research, giving balanced presentations of topics from a neutral point of view, and supporting assertions with reliable references. Wikipedia’s editors have also formed specialized groups to address vandalism, systemic bias, and other related problems.

Wikipedia has enacted an editorial board to monitor and verify the information; they are attempting to create an authority on which to check and balance their assertions. However, this seems contrary to the original vision statement of the project: free-content that is written collaboratively by volunteers.” - http://sbgradmag.org/node/180: Wikipedia and the Creation of an Authority Mon, 02/05/2007 - 10:29am — James Pearson