Some weeks ago I posted about Ideabird, q large scale ideation contest on M2M-Communication hosted by Deutsche Telekom, Deloitte, Hyve and RWTH Aachen. Last Friday, the jury decided on the winning ideas.
As you may remember, the contest's intend was to to create awareness for the positive effects that M2M applications can have for life, work and society and to stimulate innovation across industries. By gathering opinions and ideas from a broad base of creative participants and challenging them with a scientific point of view, future fields of research within this area were to be identified.
Participation was far beyond any prediction with several hundreds of submissions being sent in, despite the rather specific topic of this contest. Another great example that idea contests can reach and activate a really large audience, even if the questions asked would at first glance indicate a rather closed (small) community of experts.
Picking the very best out of the large number of really innovative, sometimes easy-yet-brilliant ideas was really no simple task. After long and intense consideration, confering and discussion we finally decided to award the three first prices (third was a split, just could not decide...) to the following ideas which we deem really really interesting:
1st Price ($5000)
Emergency triangle
The Submission: The idea is to incorporate an chip in the emergency tringles, alerting other drivers to the dangers they will encounter on the road.
How it works?
When the car has a breakdown or accident on the road is required to signal the Occurrence to other drivers. When mounting the triangle on the road, he activates a chip that transmits a warning signal by GSM to your Gps device on car or other alert system. The signal has a radius of 1 km, to not create confusion to drivers. Simple to apply, low cost and very useful for ensuring security in regional roads with low visibility.
Jury Statement: "The Emergency Triangle convinced us because it is a unique and innovative idea with the goal of increasing safety on the streets. It's a typical product, which everybody knows, and at the same time the idea offers a new and very concrete benefit that only becomes possible through M2M. Therefore it fits perfectly to the contest. The potential for such a solution is also huge - it may be placed in cars by manufacturers or offered as a valuable present for clients."
2nd Price ($3000)
M2M Remote Parking Disc
The Submission: In many countries parking discs are a common way to for authorities to see how long a car parks on a short term parking spaces. For example in germany there are parking lots where you are only allowed to stay for 90min.
Everybody has made this experience: One coffee too much in Saturdays shopping fever, overslept maximum parking time, got a ticket.
The idea is a parking disc which is controlled by a mobile phone or smartphone. When parking you send a sms or datapush by your smartphone to set the time - for example: 90min - the parking disc sets the wheel on the right time. After 85min the parking disc sends a SMS with a warning, so you have enough time to get back to the car, without getting a ticket.
Extra function: When the parking-disc is in "parking-mode" but suddenly moves (changes GPS coordinates) you get a warning, that your car might have been stolen. So actually the parking disc is also a alarm system for your car.
Jury Statement: "The Remote Parking Disk is the most innovative gimmick we have seen in the contest. It provides great help in our everyday life, fits perfectly to the contest and inspires many other applications. "
3rd Price (Split decision, $1000 each)
#1: Pizzatracker - where is my pizza?
The Submission: What a nice benefit: You know exactly when your ordered pizza will arrive!!!
Often the pizza supplier says: "....in approximately 30 minutes you will get your pizza". This could be 20, 25, 30 or e.g. 40 minutes. Nobody knwos it exactly, the answer knows only the wind.
With a tracking-code, which is given during the order-call, the customer gets a self-service possibility to trace the delivery and knows exactly when it will arrives. A delivery tracker would be a new service for the customer and therefore a unique feature compared to other delivery services: The communication in advertising!
Advantages:
- use the delivery time very effective for other doings - you are flexible
- you will get nervous until reach the 30-minutes-border: now you are safe, that the pizza service haven`t forgot the order
- the acitvation on suppliers website will increase
- process costs will decrease
- new and innovative communcation opoortunities
Jury Statement: "The Pizza Tracker addresses an interesting business by providing an innovative M2M-based solution to industrialized delivery services. It may fascinate customers of these services who probably like using online tools, and could boost service quality to a new level. It also provides great benefits to the service provider as an excellent tool for differentiation. "
#2: Modern Hide & Seek
The Submission: The idea is to modernize tradition game of Hide & Seek and bring kids back to playgrounds. We are all witnesses of today's kids behavior of mostly playing games in front of computer monitors and spending most of their time in front of it. This idea aims to change such unhealthy behavior by upgrading the game of Hide & Seek to 21st century standards.
Product would consists of bracelet/receiver with display.
Bracelet would have two basic functions:
- send location signal;
- receive location signal;
Traditional game of Hide & Seek is mostly static, but with idea of bracelet locator it could become more intense.
Hiding players would be allowed to move around predetermined territory making game more interesting.
Bracelets would also have delay setting so if you want to make the game a little bit harder, you would just set higher value for delay signal (15 seconds for example).
Additionally parents could download dedicated app to their smart phones and watch location of their children at any time.
Jury Statement: "With the help of M2M, Modern Hide & Seek brings one of the most popular children's games into the age of geocaching. It thereby allows bunch of new rules - really the next generation of Hide & Seek. "
These and more submissions as well as the lively community interaction can also be seen on the official contest website.
Congratulations to all winners! Even if your idea did not make it to the top three (four...), thank you very much for your participation! As said, picking the winners was an extremely tough, close decision and I really look forward to your ideas in one of the upcoming idea contests (that I will keep you up to date on in this blog)!
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