EPFL.

Sector: Learn

Our brief: How can we turn a university into an innovation centre?

What we did: Leading European engineering university, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, wanted to enhance an inclusive culture of idea generation to help address real-world challenges. 100%Open and local partners Catalyx created a crowdsourcing site called Fusebox that attracted nearly 1,000 staff, students and employees and sponsored challenges from global businesses.

What happened: The Fusebox community discovered 330 new ideas for challenges such as ‘How to feed the world’s nine billion people’ for Buhler, ‘Create together the interior of tomorrow’s car’ for PSA Peugeot-Citroën and ‘How to build the Eco-house of the future’ for the School’s bid in the Solar Decathlon. In partnering with industry, Fusebox has enabled EPFL to tap into private sector businesses financially and provide value back to those businesses and its stakeholders.