Global Innovation Exchange

What is the Global Innovation Exchange?

The Exchange is a global marketplace for innovations that address humanity’s greatest challenges. The Exchange brings together innovators, funders, investors, researchers, innovation-support organizations, and others to identify, support, and scale solutions that solve critical development problems. All innovations, whether a physical device or an innovative process or approach, are welcome. The Exchange helps create a full picture of the innovations available to solve humanity’s greatest challenges. The Exchange is innovation agnostic. Instead of promoting a particular innovation, it helps people access existing ideas and resources to evaluate and identify the right solution for them.

 

What is the Purpose of the Exchange?

The Exchange aims to connect innovators with the resources, contacts, and information they need to grow their innovation and improve lives around the world, as well as to give anyone who wants to make a difference the ability to leverage their skills and resources. The Exchange provides a place for those searching for innovative solutions to find, compare, and connect with the right solutions for their challenges.

The Exchange is proud to work with and amplify other platforms that focus on specific sectors, regions, or aligned networks.  Many have shared their content with the Exchange and the global marketplace continues to discuss integration with new partners. The Exchange does not replace these complementary platforms--it aggregates their content and directs users to the original source. Based on collaboration with these other platforms, the Exchange needed to:

1. Provide a brand and innovation agnostic approach.
2. Be a place to see all innovations in one place to understand the unbiased and unfiltered breadth and depth of available solutions, whether that was from an individual innovator or a for profit corporation. 
3. Not only list innovations, but also shed light on the broader context surrounding an innovation, such as: Who was using it? Where? What did they say about it? Would they recommend it? 
4. Create a positive environment for competition where people could compare different innovations, and where innovators would constantly be driven to iterate and pursue greater excellence for their solutions, being informed by what else was out there. 
5. Help innovators build their teams and connect with others who could truly help them, beyond their original funder or donor. 
6. Make applying and accessing resources easier, and expose innovators to more opportunities, money, and resources. 
7. Create a free market for development ideas, where people looking for solutions could feature their needs directly to innovators.
   

What are the Goals?

• Modernize international development. Knowing that a breakthrough idea can come from anyone, anywhere, the Exchange aims to democratize development. The Exchange is an open platform that is available to everyone.
• Connect Global Resources. Everyone can only benefit from greater sharing, learning and coordination. The Exchange is not a replacement for all of the great sites and work across development, in fact you will find many links and information to those great sites! The Exchange acts as a clearinghouse so that information can be easier to find. The Exchange wants to highlight the great programs, activities, organizations, innovations and conversations that are already occurring and engage more people with them.
• Accelerate innovation. By connecting innovators with resources more efficiently, the Exchange can more quickly test and spread solutions to get them into the communities that need them most.

The founders believe that each person has the power to change the world. Create a profile to see how the Exchange can help you get started.

Who should use the Exchange? 

The Exchange is for innovators, funders, researchers, innovation-support organizations, and others interested in identifying, supporting, scaling, and solving development challenges. Entrepreneurs, start-up organizations, businesses, investors, foundations, donors, non-governmental organizations, governments, religious groups, universities, research centers, think tanks, students, tinkerers, and makers are all invited to participate in the Exchange.

The Founding Partners

The founding partners include the U.S. Global Development Lab at USAID, AusAid, KOICA and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The founding partners also engaged over 100+ organizations such as donors, foundations, universities, research organizations, non-governmental organizations, and news media, to co-create the Exchange and leverage the unqiue expertise of each organization. View a comprehensive and growing list of partners. The Exchange is open to everyone, so become a partner today.

References

• Global Innovation Exchange
  

Further Readings

• Water and Energy for Food (WE4F) portal on energypedia
• Powering Agriculture: An Energy Grand Challenge for Development