Fujitsu Siemens Computers Goes Open Innovation: User Innovation Contest Started

You create the next IT Services for Tomorrow’s Data Center

Fujitsu Siemens Computers (FSC), a large IT infrastructure provider, just started their first community-based innovation contest this week. The contest asks everyone with a clever idea to develop ideas around the Data Center of the future.

They ask the questions how data centers will work in the future, what services will be required by users, and which topics will be of strategic importance for their business.

The contest has been created by a business team within FSC with the help of HYVE AG, a Munich based open innovation accelerator. On the platform, users not just become a source of ideas, but a member of an Innovation Community. This shall enhance their ideas with the help of other contest participants and the internal experts from Fujitsu Siemens Computers.

Every idea can be evaluated and commented by every contestant. As a consequence, ideas become vital elements which can be formed and developed by many spirits and thereby have the chance to gain excellence. While the original spin doctor competes for one of the prizes for one specific idea, the contestant’s activity within the community is rewarded as well.

In order to enable the contestants to actively interact beside the discussions on ideas, several additional functions are available to the participants. Weekly chats with other participants and Fujitsu Siemens Computers Professionals are dedicated to specific topics which are defined according to eminent issues within the pool of ideas. Not to mention the forum and other features.

Every contestant can contribute several ideas. The essence of the ideas is described through a handful of uniform parameters such as target group and basic functionality. The idea can also be enriched by any attachment such as diagrams or mind maps. In order to compare and rank the ideas, the contributions are evaluated along some criteria such as market potential, value to the customer or novelty to the market. Contestants evaluate their own as well as any other idea by these criteria.

The contest consists of different phases:

First, ideas are contributed and evaluated by the community. After two weeks the contest went on, FSC experts will come into play and start the expert evaluation phase were ideas are evaluated along similar criteria as the community evaluated the ideas. A tag cloud helps to explore the pool of ideas intuitively and your favorite ideas can be added to your personal list in order to keep an eye on their progress. And in the end, the winning idea gets 5000 Euro, plus there are several of the latest FSC laptops to win.

So if you are interested in data centers services, here is the opportunity to shape the future of this industry. http://innovation-contest.fujitsu-siemens.com. I am curiuous to see how this company-driven innovation contest works and which people come up to submit ideas.