Our pitch:
Problem:
Communities worldwide are about to face major job losses due to automation and emerging technologies like AI, 3D Printing, Smart Robots, and Intelligent Vehicles. Without proper planning to retrain and develop capacity, it will be chaotic. Many communities will be facing devastating financial and social impact of these changes.
While economic development people agree on the disruptive nature of emerging technologies, many of them do not feel that they have enough knowledge and resources to come up with effective strategies. Cost of assessment, planning, and execution is prohibitive for many underprivileged and small communities. If waited too long, they will be facing serious challenges with their workforce.
Solution
Every community has a unique composition of the workforce but at a larger scale, disruption of jobs is going to be similar, maybe at a different magnitude or timescale.
Creating a global pool of intellectual capital, providing strategic process that can be replicated, developing reusable content, and access to execution tools, will result in better planning, lowering the cost, and more importantly, reduce the negative impact of emerging technology disruptions.
Our solution is to develop a global network of communities, connect them to the experts in key emerging technologies, provide them a sector by sector job impact analysis, and give them up-skill and re-skill training content to better prepare and manage the potential disruption by 3D Printing, Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Blockchain, IOT, Smart Robots, and Smart Vehicles.
IdeaGist is the largest digital incubation platform, helping innovators and entrepreneurs from all 195 UN recognized countries. Over the past five year, our team has been building a community based collaboration platform that can be used for large scale collaboration like this.
Impact
Instead of job losses to technology and economic disruption, we hope to create a positive experience that will prepare communities for the disruption ahead and will give them the knowledge and tools to manage this disruption to their advantage. In terms of direct impact, access to experts pool, a marketplace for training content, and ability to connect with other communities, all will help in reducing the cost and improving the effectiveness.
Where our solution team is headquartered or located:
Minneapolis, MN, USAThe dimensions of the Challenge our solution addresses:
What makes our solution innovative:
IdeaGist has already developed a digital collaboration platform and has following features that will help with the Emerging Technology Accelerator program:
- Independent Communities
- People profiles, expertise, hourly rates, etc.
- Paid or volunteer consulting sessions with experts
- MOOCs
- Online mentoring
- Global aggregation of content
- Service provider and ecosystem directory
- Local and Global Pools of resources
It is not the technology but the collaboration among different communities that will make our solution work. IdeaGist already connects innovators, experts, investors, and entrepreneurs from more than 300 communities worldwide.
How technology is integral to our solution:
Without the technology, finding experts, hiring consultants, finding partners, developing training, delivering training to a large number of people, sharing stories, planning and tracking projects, and tracking resources will be very costly and many underprivileged and small communities may not be able to do anything against the tsunami of technological change.
Our solution goals over the next 12 months:
- Partnership with at least 50 communities to collaborate
- Develop basic training for masses on at least three emerging technologies
- Collation of available content on job losses by technology and by sector
- Partnership with one major University to offer certification exam on the emerging technologies
- Develop a high level assessment and planning process for communities to perform an analysis of potential impact on their economy and to develop a mitigation strategy
Our vision over the next three to five years to grow and scale our solution to affect the lives of more people:
300+ communities worldwide actively mitigating risks to their economies due to the technological revolution, and, more importantly, turning them to their advantage.
The key characteristics of the populations who will benefit from our solution in the next 12 months:
The regions where we will be operating in the next 12 months:
How we will reach and retain our customers or beneficiaries:
Our program is online, including online training, online consulting, online mentoring, online project planning, online content, and online tracking of progress.
How many people we are currently serving with our solution:
While we have not started the Emerging Technology Accelerator program as we are building a pilot right now, our global incubation platform serves entrepreneurs from all 195 UN recognized countries. We currently have ~32,000 users, that include more than 300 technology experts, 1,300 mentors, and ~4,000 innovators.
How many people we will be serving with our solution in the 12 months and the next 3 years:
Over the next 12 months, we expect to serve a 50,000 or more people taking at least one of the basic training course through our network.
Over the next three years, we expect to see at least 300 communities actively using our platform, providing access to 30 million plus people.
How our solution team is organized:
Hybrid of For Profit and NonprofitHow many people work on our solution team:
5How many years we have been working on our solution:
5-10 yearsThe skills our solution team has that will enable us to attract the different resources needed to succeed and make an impact:
Technology Platform Development
Technology Impact Assessment
Global Network Building
Entrepreneurship
Innovation
Human Resources
Education
Our revenue model:
The proposed organization will be a hybrid non-profit/for-profit. Cost of running the support organization for partnering communities and related infrastructure will be non-profit, providing access to resources and connecting all the communities together in a global network. Estimated cost of operations at full capacity is estimated at 300K per year. This cost will be divided among all the member communities based on their size and PPP. Model is based on 300 member communities, each paying on average $100 per month.
This platform will also run a marketplace for all partnering communities to offer services and content to each other on commercial basis. Platform will charge a small commission on such transactions. This marketplace will be run for profit.
Why we are applying to Solve:
We would like to help communities that are left behind by the technological transformations of work can fully participate in and profit from the new opportunities these transformations create. Our focus is capacity development and knowledge transfer.
Within this context:
1. we can help each other in connecting with right people in different communities.
2. Solve can help us connect with funding organizations to support activities like content generation in local languages, offering online or classroom training, sponsor visits by innovators and entrepreneurs to present case studies, etc.
3. Solve can partner with us in providing an online mentoring program to these communities.
The key barriers for our solution:
Key barrier is the short-term cash flow to produce enough content that will make it useful for partner communities. We believe that this program will be financially sustainable with 12 months. Solve can help in elevating the profile of our project to get the needed intellectual capital.
The types of connections and partnerships we would be most interested in if we became Solvers:
Solution Team
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Hassan Syed IdeaGist.com
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Our tagline:
Turn technology disruption to your advantage