CauseTech Launches First Global Contest To Address Energy Needs In Africa

SAN JOSE, Calif., June 10, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council and the Business Performance Innovation (BPI) Network have launched CauseTech's first contest: The Burundi Renewable Energy Challenge. CauseTech is a new private sector initiative to crowdsource breakthrough ideas, inventions, products, and emerging technologies that can advance the work done by the UNICEF Global Innovation Center worldwide.

Dubbed "Succeed Where There's a Need," the campaign promotes social entrepreneurship and aims to aggregate the world's best and brightest innovators, technologists, IT professionals, product developers, researchers, entrepreneurs, academics and post-graduate students in a global open innovation ecosystem. 

The aim is to tap into collective thinking and input to identify, adapt and deploy inventive technology solutions that can help UNICEF scale its efforts to meet the ever-growing needs of the poorest and most vulnerable and excluded children across 150 countries. 

A dedicated community site (CauseTech.Net), powered by innovation platform leader IdeaScale, will enable participants to share ideas, vote and discuss refinements to "inspirations that overcome limitations." CauseTech.Net will register and profile contributors and run crowdsourcing contests and challenges developed by UNICEF offices located in more than 150 countries.

CauseTech's first contest focuses on renewable energy solutions for Burundi, the most energy-poor country in the world. Lack of access to safe, clean, and affordable energy is a key bottleneck for children and their families in the Base-of-pyramid markets. In the context of Burundi, only 3% of the population is connected to the central electrical grid. The vast majority of the population is reliant on simple biomass fuels, such as wood, coal, and kerosene, to meet their cooking and lighting needs. These energy sources negatively impact all aspects of daily life – exposing households to severe health risks, restricting income-generating opportunities to daylight hours, stunting learning outcomes for children, and preventing the delivery of critical health services.

A switch to sustainable, off-grid energy solutions is urgently needed. Yet efforts to electrify rural Burundi are complicated by the following barriers:

• Limited availability of quality energy products and services
• Weak private sector presence
• Low local capacity to operate and maintain renewable energy products
• Limited infrastructure  

The Challenge: How might we create sustainable renewable energy solutions to electrify rural Burundi?

The contest will run until August 31^st, and will be followed by a judging period. The winner will be announced at the annual Base-of-Pyramids Convention, to be held this year in Mexico City. The winning solution will also be tested in the field in Burundi, with the potential to be scaled across regions.

"We hope private sector partners will step forward here to provide funding for crowdsourced innovation challenges such as the Burundi Challenge and to help us engage smart minds in solving real-world problems UNICEF workers are facing in the field," notes Donovan Neale-May, executive director of the CMO Council and BPI Network. A new global survey on Disruptive Entrepreneurship by his BPI Network, highlighted the top ways corporations could help advance social innovation. This includes:

• Investing startups and crowdsourced ideation contests and challenges
• Allocating resources to social innovation programs within the company
• Supporting social causes focused on advancing technology innovation

"UNICEF is committed to ensuring innovative solutions be scaled to address needs for all," notes Dr. Sharad Sapra, director of the UNICEF Global Innovation Center which has R&D labs in 10 countries. "Despite incredible developments and technological advances across the globe, there are still many populations that are remote and deprived."

"Our development strategy is to be the connector between all the relevant actors in the value chain, to ensure innovative solutions can be successfully implemented and scaled across regions and contexts," adds Dr. Sapra. "Achieving our goal of reaching every child requires disrupting 'business as usual.' New ways of thinking have to be developed. Assumptions and strategies must change. That's why innovation is so important," he adds.

Using the tagline, "Your Brilliance Can Make a Difference," the campaign partner groups represent more than 12,000 high-level executives (CMOs, CIOs, CTOs, COOs, CFOs, LOB leaders, etc.) in 110 countries.  Other partners and affiliates include media and publishing groups, corporate R&D centers, universities, incubators, accelerators, venture capitalists, angel investors, and serial entrepreneurs.

About UNICEF:
UNICEF promotes the rights and wellbeing of every child, in everything we do. Together with our partners, we work in 190 countries and territories to translate that commitment into practical action, focusing special effort on reaching the most vulnerable and excluded children, to the benefit of all children, everywhere. For more information about UNICEF and its work visit http://www.unicef.org

About IdeaScale:
IdeaScale is the largest cloud-based innovation software platform in the world with more than 25,000 customers and 4 million users. The software allows organizations to involve the opinions of public and private communities by collecting their ideas and giving users a platform to vote. The ideas are then evaluated, routed, and delivered on the back-end, making IdeaScale the engine of innovation. IdeaScale's current client roster includes industry leaders, such as EA Sports, NBC, NASA, Xerox and the Executive Office of the President. For more information about IdeaScale, visit http://ideascale.com/

About the CMO Council
The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council is the only global network of executives specifically dedicated to high-level knowledge exchange, thought leadership and personal relationship building among senior corporate marketing leaders and brand decision-makers across a wide range of global industries. The CMO Council's 8,500 members control more than $450 billion in aggregated annual marketing expenditures and run complex, distributed marketing and sales operations worldwide. In total, the CMO Council and its strategic interest communities include more than 60,000 global executives in more than 110 countries covering multiple industries, segments and markets. Regional chapters and advisory boards are active in the Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East, India and Africa. The council's strategic interest groups include the Coalition to Leverage and Optimize Sales Effectiveness (CLOSE), Mobile Relationship Marketing (MRM) Strategies Forum, LoyaltyLeaders.org, CMOCIOAlign.org, Marketing Supply Chain Institute, Customer Experience Board, Digital Marketing Performance Institute, GeoBranding Center and the Brand Inspiration Center. More information on the CMO Council is available at www.cmocouncil.org

About the BPI Network:
The Business Performance Innovation (BPI) Network is a peer-driven thought leadership and professional networking organization dedicated to advancing the emerging roles of the Chief Innovation Officer and Innovation Strategist within today's enterprise. The BPI Network brings together global executives who are champions of change within their organizations through ongoing research, authoritative content and peer-to-peer conversations. We are advocates for Innovation as a fundamental discipline and function within 21st Century organizations and seek to demonstrate where and how new inventive solutions and approaches can advance business value, gratify customers, ensure sustainability and create competitive advantage for companies worldwide. For more information, visit the BPI Network at www.bpinetwork.com

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