Dubbed the Rare Genomics Institute, the non-profit organization could be considered a Kickstarter for genomics. The project first connects a patient with a research institution that’s willing to take their case, and then develops a budget that can be funded by friends, family and online supporters.

Open Cities is a project co-founded by the European Union that aims to validate how to approach Open & User Driven Innovation methodologies to the Public Sector in a scenario of Future Internet Services for Smart Cities. It will do so, by leveraging existing tools, trials and platforms in Crowdsourcing, Open Data, Fiber to the Home and Open Sensor Networks in seven major European cities: Helsinki, Berlin, Amsterdam, Paris, Rome, Barcelona and Bologna.

"We are a non-profit tech company that specializes in developing free and open source software for information collection, visualization and interactive mapping."

we saw most of this 90min film before one of the days session started - a really interesting project with some great footage - worth watching when it is available.

"Sparked makes it easy for people with busy lives to help nonprofits get valuable work done when it's convenient. We call it micro-volunteering. Through the convenience of the Internet, and with the collaboration of others, micro-volunteers use their professional skills to help causes they care about. Nonprofits post challenges to the network. Volunteers post one or more answers to each challenge. A challenge could be anything from, "Can you critique these logo designs?" to "How can we raise funds to drill a well in Kenya?" When volunteers have a free moment, they find a challenge that's interesting to them and that matches their skills. When they've found a challenge that suits them, they post an answer."

"iStockphoto, which grew out of a free image-sharing exchange used by a group of graphic designers, had undercut Harmel by more than 99 percent. How? By creating a marketplace for the work of amateur photographers – homemakers, students, engineers, dancers. There are now about 22,000 contributors to the site, which charges between $1 and $5 per basic image."

"The turnover of the Danish group has increased by 38% in 2008 to reach 182 million Euros. However, LEGO, having experienced the first loss in its history in 1998, recorded a historic loss of 188 million Euros in 2003, fewer than 6 years. The LEGO group has managed to rectify the situation by dramatically revisiting its innovation policy and its relationship with the user of LEGO, including turning to open innovation and crowdsourcing." Some insights into how LEGO reinvented their company.

"The report details how innovative collaborations online are changing the way patients, providers, and researchers learn about therapeutic regimens and disease management. It examines the benefits and concerns regarding Health 2.0 and includes an extensive listing of health media resources. According to the report, the growing demand for transparency will drive the evolution of social media in health. A growing array of tools will become available that are increasingly mobile, as well as personal health data storage in commercial products like Microsoft Health Vault, Google Health, and others." 2008, shows stats on how many people were searching for health info online.

"OpenBuildings is a new community-driven website that lists architecture from across the globe; be it historic, contemporary or conceptual, enabling a more open way to share architectural knowledge. OpenBuildings was founded by architects and architecture fanatics who became increasingly frustrated by the lack of online resources for learning about architecture and buildings. Until now this has been a protracted and fragmented experience, with no single website offering a serious informational resource. OpenBuildings solves this problem: an openly editable encyclopedia of buildings from around the world. "

"
Emporis.com is the world's largest free-to-use website about buildings. Professionals and people with an interest in structures can find buildings, developments, and photos in thousands of cities worldwide. Professionals from the building industry and people with a love for architecture are allowed to participate in the completion of information. " listing of Arup buildings

"MIMOA is an online architecture guide. It is the best source of information for your city trip with all Modern Architecture in one view. MIMOA shows Modern Architecture on a map with the address and all additional information you need to actually find and visit interiors, parks, public places, buildings and bridges. " great summary page of Arup projects listed on MIMOA, not sure why Oresund Link gets a low review - should we care?

"As climate change touches every aspect of our lives, how will it change us? How will we adapt? Living Climate Change is a devoted space for the most defining design challenge of our time. It's also a place to support fresh thinking and share provocative ideas about the future." crowd sourcing responses to climate change, timeframe to 2030

"In 1714, the British government offered a cash award of £20,000 to anyone who could develop a way of precisely determining a ship’s longitude. Although most felt the answer would emerge from a leading astronomer, in an early example of crowd sourcing, the prize inspired the British clockmaker John Harrison to develop the marine chronometer, which by solving the problem greatly enhanced the safety of long-distance sea voyages." nice examples of how 'prizes' have been used to incentivise innovation.

"The age of the expert is over. Information is flowing at such an everyone, everywhere, everything, all-the-time pace that participation in the knowledge economy is no longer optional, or a value-add. It’s compulsory. And it offers an identity crisis for those individuals and companies who call themselves experts, leaders, innovators, and problem solvers." interesting article on the role of innovation convergence and community

Back in January, the city of Los Angeles announced a gap of $433 million for their 2009 budget. Instead of just cutting services however, LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa took the unusual step of posting a survey online for residents of the city to fill out. For each category of city service, the survey asked residents, "what program would you reduce to help balance the budget?", followed by an itemized list of services they could choose from.

"The real-time city is now real! The increasing deployment of sensors and hand-held electronics in recent years is allowing a new approach to the study of the built environment. The way we describe and understand cities is being radically transformed - alongside the tools we use to design them and impact on their physical structure." and in particular the flickr tourism project: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=4653470

Videos: 78 | Members: 358 | Discussions: 17 Radiohead has released the data behind their video for "House of Cards" for you to manipulate. Upload your results here.

"Fuelly is a site that lets you track, share, and compare your gas mileage. Simply sign up, add a car or motorcycle, and begin tracking your mileage. To date, 12,363 Fuelly users have tracked 176,176 fuel-ups in 15,228 vehicles over 46,944,854 miles of driving." Crowdsourcing data to input into other tools such as Wattzon

Signtific are working with IFTF to crowd source micro-forecasts about the role of personal satellites using a web based game environment. "We invite scientists, engineers, designers, developers, researchers, technologists, and creative thinkers of all kinds to join the lab and help us uncover, together, what is impossible to uncover alone."

List of Open Innovation & Crowdsourcing Examples - Best practices

The new Live Simplicity website is partly a marketing instrument to promote Philips’ Sense and Simplicity slogan, but definititely also a tool to acquire knowledge on what people think in Philips-relevant areas of life. The sensing platform facilitates discussions in 6 areas (Business, Communication, General, Internet & Technology, Lifestyle & Social, and Wellness). Each discussion starts with a short description and two contrasting viewpoints (A and B). Visitors are invited either to vote for a viewpoint, or register as contributor and write a comment.

Over 100.000 people have responded to the call of GalaxyZoo to help with the classification of pictures of galaxies. The result of this mass collaboration is that every picture of galaxies that was uploaded on the site was analyzed and rated 30 times reaching high levels of validity.

NineSigma enables clients to source innovative ideas, technologies, products and services from outside their organizations quickly and inexpensively by connecting them to the best innovators and solution providers from around the world.