“100% Open have helped us to rapidly develop our understanding of the Open Innovation space and identify the best approach for our business. They clearly appreciate the challenges that large businesses have innovating and by bringing tested methodologies, broad experience and can-do attitude they have provided both guidance and inspiration in our Open Innovation journey.”
Jogesh Limbani, Head of Open Innovation, R&D UK, Orange Labs.
“We wanted to use the power of our technology to help people to create positive change through their mobiles. Working closely with 100%Open, we tapped into expert communities to create an iPhone application where lots of small actions can have a big impact. Through this new movement, we want to generate hundreds of thousands of extra hours of volunteering in the UK each year”.
Jogesh Limbani, Head of Open Innovation, R&D UK, Orange Labs.
Our Orange Mobile Volunteering project kicked off in August 2010. We used crowdsourcing to find effective new ways for millions of mobile phone customers to volunteer bite-sized chunks of their time helping out social entrepreneurs and charities.
Through an app on their mobile phone, people could for example volunteer to map and tag wildlife photos, make an audio map for the blind, or complete a charity’s survey. Imagine the potential of millions of people regularly contributing in this way. Big Society in action!
Having named this brand new category of helping ‘Mobile Volunteering’, we designed a new portal with delivery partners Chaordix and the Respect and Responsibility team at Everything Everywhere.
We recruited a careful mix of over 1,600 developers, social entrepreneurs and NGOs whose two tasks were to suggest ideas for new mobile phone apps and to find existing apps that Orange could promote. Within 2 months we had 259 submissions on the site on which there were 2,033 comments and suggestions which, in our experience, is highly productive . Next came the voting of the community favourites. Orange had committed to making the top three app ideas prior to launch, regardless of what they were, which was an important sign of commitment to the process. The winning apps included ways to report bullying, earmark waste ground for guerilla gardening, a way to map places to play for the nation’s urban children and filling in a petition for Amnesty International.
A key component of this project was mixing on and off line engagements. We held several Jam sessions where community members could meet each other and Orange and get help on their ideas and apps.
Orange has now launched the new app and web site as part of a major PR initiative for the programme they have named ‘Do Some Good’. We sincerely hope it does.
Photo credit: Benjamin Ellis
