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Phase: Concepting

Say No To Impossible (Updated)

The idea of the concept is to create a public platform where companies can post their innovations that contribute to the world benefit and where the society can see what companies are doing worldwide. It was created during McGill OpenIDEO hackathon.

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Written by DeletedUser

Say No to Impossible 1 Say No to Impossible 1
Say No to Impossible 2 Say No to Impossible 2
The idea of the concept is to create a public platform where small and large companies will be able to upload their innovation stories that contribute to the world benefit and where the society can see what companies are doing worldwide. The main challenges would be to stimulate companies to post their projects and users to access and participate in order to stimulate more companies to contribute to the world benefit. However, we could certainly overcome these difficulties with the support of a celebrity. Additionally, the platform can include crowdsourcing. The public will decide on which initiatives are most important to their communities.  This way, the initiatives are more relevant to the public as the decision making is decentralized, and some of the cost of development and implementation can be removed from the for-profit sector.  Given that the companies are active in social responsibility anyway, the platform will indicate which initiatives will have the most impact.  This will provide a platform where public and private sector interests converge and will ensure long term sustainability of the concept.  Crowdsourcing also means that the emphasis will be placed on the communities and social good, but not on any centralized organization.

Ideas created in collaboration with Rehan Ali, Henrique Carvalho, Amélie Dion, Ibrahim Ghorayeb, Kyle Lin, Claudia Murayama

How does your concept celebrate, identify or inspire for-profit businesses that act as agents of world benefit?

The concept will allow companies to publish their innovations on a public platform, where the society will be able to know more information about what companies are doing to collaborate for the world benefit. With crowdsourcing, the platform will indicate to the for-profit sector which initiatives matter the most in the communities they operate in, and thereby taking away some of the research and implementation costs. By implementing these crowdsourced initiatives, the companies will benefit in terms of increased awareness and share of mind.

How will your concept help us create or leverage stories of world benefit that are sticky and shareable?

- Raise the awareness of social actions performed by companies. - Increase the number of volunteers to support the causes, as visitors would be able to find local volunteer information, and how they can make a difference in their local communities. - Because the stories are sourced also from the communities, it will provide a self-sustaining platform for social good.

What will it take to scale your concept so that its reach is global and widespread?

1. Develop an online platform where companies can upload their stories of innovation for world benefit. 2. Approach companies so they can post their stories. 3. Approach media to find a celebrity / talk show (e.g. Ellen DeGeneres) who can let us present on his/her show on a monthly basis. 4. Incorporate a crowdsourcing platform to allow the public to decide on the key initiatives that they consider most impactful within their specific communities.

This inspired (1)

Wiki for Business World Benefit (UPDATED: 11/16/2012)
Wiki for Business World Benefit (UPDATED: 11/16/2012)

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DeletedUser

I like this idea but feel it lacks the evaluation aspect that some of the other ideas include. In that this concept provides a platform for businesses to share their stories of how they are acting as businesses of world benefit, it's great... Could you expand to think about how each business would be evaluated?

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Photo of Ashley Jablow
Team

Nice prompt for further iteration Beau – maybe you want to suggest some builds to help the team think through what evaluation (or the process for choosing which stories to share) could look like, in your opinion?

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Photo of Meena Kadri
Team

Hey there McGill Hacksters! Perhaps there might be learnings you could build upon from Brand Karma: http://brandkarma.com

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DeletedUser

Thank you for the observations, Beau, Ashley and Meena. We just updated the concept including the participation of the public throughout crowdsourcing. This will allow the public to decide on the key initiatives that they consider most impactful.

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Photo of Meena Kadri
Team

Fab update, guys!

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Photo of Tracy Brandenburg
Team

Nice update! I really like the addition of including public participation. This really helps break the barrier between the company and the consumer. Now we are all one community!

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