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What is Colab Egypt?
Colab Egypt is part of the Global Innovation Partners Programme, supported by the UK’s Newton Fund. This open innovation programme aims to crowdsource solutions and create collaborations between UK and Egyptian oganisations to solve pressing socio-economic or environmental challenges. Colab Egypt will be officially launched to innovators in September 2018, calling for solutions to two pressing socio-economic challenges in Egypt.
What is Open Innovation?
In an increasingly connected world many organisations recognise that ideas can come from anywhere. But no matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else! Open Innovation is designed for large organisations and companies to partner with small ones or academics in order to innovate faster, cheaper and better. Open Innovation can be culturally challenging but commercially rewarding. Crowdsourcing is a key open innovation method, attracting a wide audience to a specific purpose to create innovations, solve a problem, or improve the effectiveness of an idea.
Challenge Holders are the most important part of Colab Egypt as they are the route to market for innovations that will be discovered. They also co-create the challenge then judge, develop and commercialise winning solutions.
Challenge Holders are typically organisations with clear strategic priorities and a willingness to collaborate to solve their thorniest problems. They stand to benefit strategically and commercially from the competition, reaching new markets, generating value and creating networks and partnerships. Challenge Holders need to create an offer in the form of a collaborative business model in order to attract Innovators and be open to collaborate with both UK and Egyptian small businesses. They also need to commit time (50+ person-days) to this process and contribute to awards for innovators.
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Problem:
Constrained by geography and access to water, Egypt has a limited and shrinking supply of uninhabited land that can be used to grow food. As cities expand outwards, farmland is lost to informal settlement. This trend is made worse by the effects of climate change and by farmers leaving their land and moving to urban areas in pursuit of improved livelihoods.
Opportunity:
Technologies enabling new farming approaches which allow for food to be grown in places not traditionally thought of as agricultural land could help alleviate stress on land and water resources and improve access to nutritious foods.
Problem:
Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women worldwide and in Egypt. However, most breast cancer patients in Egypt are diagnosed in later stages of the disease, when life-saving treatments are less effective. Although the effectiveness of mammography in preventing death from cancer has been proven, Egyptian women may be reluctant to seek out this potentially life-saving preventative care for a variety of reasons. The national screening programme faces challenges related to keeping contact with patients, maintaining a continuous funding system and recruiting and training staff.
Opportunity:
Developing breast cancer detection, diagnosis, or treatment technologies, identifying at-risk patients through less invasive diagnostics like genetic testing, developing sensing or imaging technologies for tumour detection and improving information handling and communication with patients.
Our process is based on proven Yomken.com and 100%Open techniques for successful innovation challenges. Challenge Holders will be trained on collaboration tools and mindsets and helped to write compelling challenge questions. A high profile launch is followed by expert judging of innovator submissions and finally, collaboration agreements are facilitated between Challenge Holders and challenge winners to ensure stable and productive collaborations.
