Solve Real Word Challenges – Help Real People

March 2, 2020

Avy Pouch team works on their innovative avalanche safety backpack. Photo by Riley Bickford.
Avy Pouch team works on their innovative avalanche safety backpack. Photo by Riley Bickford.

A series of challenges are being collected for the Alaska innovative community to help solve.

Each Community Challenge will bring Alaska partners such as Health TIE, Launch Alaska, and Alaska Ocean Cluster together to help identify the challenge topics, define the criteria for competition winners and provide subject matter experts to judge the submissions.

Community Challenge winners will receive funding and assistance to work with partners to advance their ideas for further evaluation and validation. The first challenge, in health care, will be announced in March.

Challenges are a new form of open innovation used around the world by government agencies, advocacy groups and private companies to inspire innovation to address opportunities and solve problems. 

The UA Community Challenge program will be sharing local and global challenges that inspire Alaskans to focus their experience, talent and creativity to compete for a prize while unlocking new ideas and innovations. Innovations can address an opportunity that needs a local solution that could perhaps become a new product or service for existing organizations or grow to be a new global venture. 

Impact Innovation works to inspire solutions to the problems that matter and will affect our local communities and our economy.

Local challenges targeted to Alaskan issues and opportunities, and others that might be interesting to creative Alaskans can be found here. Submit your challenge ideas here!