GreenXchange supported by Best Buy, Creative Commons, IDEO,
Mountain Equipment Co-op, Nike, nGenera, Outdoor Industry
Association, salesforce.com, 2degrees, and Yahoo!
GLOBE-Net (February 3, 2010) - Last week 10
leading organizations announced the launch of the GreenXchange
(GX), a Web-based marketplace where companies can collaborate and
share intellectual property (IP) which can lead to new
sustainability business models and innovation.
Announced at a CEO breakfast at the World Economic Forum in
Davos, Switzerland, the organizations called on other corporations
to join them in committing to opening up their IP to fast-track the
development of innovative solutions to sustainability
challenges.
"Nike is today committing to placing more than 400 of our
patents on GX for research, demonstrating our belief that the best
way to stimulate sustainable innovation is through open
innovation," said Mark Parker, NIKE, Inc. president and CEO
(right). "Our hope is this will unleash new innovation to help
solve current obstacles to sustainability issues."
One example of IP that could have cross-industry benefits is
Nike's Environmentally Preferred Rubber. Used in Nike footwear the
rubber contains 96 percent fewer toxins than the original
formulation.
By licensing the technology on GX it could be used in other
company's footwear, or it could hypothetically be used by Mountain
Equipment Co-op for bicycle inner tubes. In this way Mountain
Equipment Co-op could bring a greener product to market more
quickly and cheaply than it could on its own.
"There is so much duplication of effort and wasted resources
when it comes to sustainability," said John Wilbanks, VP for
Science at Creative Commons, the organization responsible for
creating a platform to make the sharing of IP simple, faster and
more cost-effective.
"We need to make it easier for individuals, companies, academia,
and researchers to collaborate and share best practices in order to
create and adopt technologies that have the potential to solve
global sustainability challenges," Wilbanks said.
The 10 founding partners of GX share a commitment to the power
of open innovation and collaborative networks to fuel sustainable
innovation by making their patented technologies available for
research and licensing. "Today Best Buy will also commit to
licensing patents and related information on GX to support
sustainable innovation," said Kal Patel, Best Buy EVP of Emerging
Business.
Don
Tapscott (left), co-author of "Wikinomics" and chairman of nGenera
Insight, is a visionary thinker who inspired and helped incubate GX
in conjunction with Nike's Sustainable Business and Innovation Lab.
Tapscott said, "Increasingly it makes good business sense for
companies to share some of their intellectual property. The
GreenXchange is the new commons and by applying open innovation to
sustainability it will contribute not just to the heath and well
being of our planet but also to the cost control and
competitiveness of its member companies."
nGenera Corporation will be facilitating the GX innovation
process by providing the technology that will support "private
rooms", where patent holders and patent seekers can discuss prior
usage, patent fees, patent restrictions, and other confidential
details.
GX was built by a team of developers on salesforce.com's cloud
computing platform, enabling the collaborative innovation at the
heart of the GX mission. "The founding members share a vision for
bringing about positive change through better collaboration," said
Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com. "The business of
changing the world is something today's leading companies need to
take an active role in, and we are proud to be a part of that
effort."
"Yahoo! is encouraged by the GreenXchange's commitment to
accelerate the learning curve for energy efficiency, sustainable
technology, and sustainable business practices, through open
innovation," said David Dibble, EVP of service engineering, and
operations, Yahoo! Inc. "The GreenXChange fosters cross-industry
collaboration to increase the adoption of sustainable best
practices, in a manner that's good for the planet and good for our
individual businesses."
The benefit of placing intellectual property on GX is that it
gives the IP owners the ability to choose the licensing approach
they feel comfortable with - from research and attribution
recognition to non-competitive use and simple fee structures.
By making private intellectual property visible and usable, the
aim is to accelerate the development of green innovation. The
launch of GX is the first step in a journey towards more
sustainable innovation, and the more companies that post their IP
the faster the journey. More information can be found at http://greenxchange.force.com/.
See related article Patent Strategies for Promoting Open
Innovation