How HPE Challenged the World - Crowdsourcing & HPE Tech to Drive Global Impact

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During HPE Spirit Week, an entire day was dedicated to "Sustainability".  We were joined by Beat Mathea, Program Manager, Sustainability and Social Innovation who shared the story of the Living Progress Challenge with our employees in a global webcast.

The inspirational story of the foundation of this program and the steps taken to make the world a better place are one more reason, I am proud to work for HPE.

We put a call out to the world - "What digital tools and applications would you create to improve people's lives? It was open to people, NGO's, for  profit - open to all topics - education, health, economic, environmental.

 We adopted a contest paradigm enabled by crowdsourcing - tap into the global community - get great ideas to solve the world's tough challenges  AND through this program we would develop  deployable solutions that improve people's lives.

In the Living Progress Challenge - participants would bring design and development services, organizational support, the weight of the HPE brand and marketing and exposure to get this program off the ground.

We wanted to build an effective, fast and diverse program - one that had a range of impact areas and locations, digital solutions that could be effectively built and deployed, with a high likelihood of having their intended impact - all at a fast clip - so effective, fast, diverse.

For us, this was not business as usual, we would tap into global expertise to make technology and impact possible.

The Living Challenge Program had five phases - Idea, Proposal, Design, Build and Deploy.  We received 400 ideas in the Idea Phase from all over the world.  Over 130 proposals were submitted globally.  We were pleasantly suprised by the variety of topics and outputs that the selection from the Proposal phase generated.    Proposals were submitted from 28 countries throughout the world.  In the Design Phase, we were able to create 17 prototypes in 12 weeks that spanned a wide range of impact areas and technological outputs.  We narrowed it down to four winning teams in the Fourth and Fifth Phases Build and Deploy.  In this phase, we brought in HPE experts to help guide integration of HPE technology and navigate the deployment process.  The ultimate goal was ensuring the solutions developed would endure once the challenge was over - we looked holistically at how to implement, manage and market these solutions.

The four winning solutions were:

Mobile app to help rural women's saving groups digitally track and manage their money.

Worth 2.0 - Pact:  A mobile application to help rural women's savins groups groups digitally track and manage their money.

Detect IT: FishTackling Illegal Trade of Fisheries Products - WWF:  Analytics tool that uses Vertica database to rapidly analyze  trade data to identify potentially illegal trade in fisheries products.

Internet hub for finding ways to volunteer and do good - transforming how people discover volunteer opportunities "from search to social".

Social Volunteer Discovery - Points of Light: All for Good.org is a web hub to transform how people discover volunteer opportunities by applying machine learning and persuasive US design to the largest platform of volunteer opportunities in the US.

pupilo - not for profit with the objective to create a social impact giving leadership tool with actions to change young adults livesMentorMe - Raul Elizando and team:  Improving the global economy through education by enabling young adults to complete high school and pursue vocational or college education.

As a result of the Living Progress Challenge, Hewlett Packard Enterprise won the International Society for Professional Innovation Management (ISPIM) 2017 Grand Prize.  The competition was launched in 2015, to recognize excellence in innovation,management that are so often overshadowed by the innovation itself.

The HPE Living Progress program uses sustainability as a driver of innovation.  Through this program, we are a creating sustainable solutions for our company, our cusomters and our world.  

We are continuing to live the legacy of our co-founder, David Packard,

"The betterment of our society is not a job to be left to a few. It is a responsibility to be shared by all." - David Packard, Co-Founder, Hewlett Packard.

The betterment of our society is not a job to be left to a few. It is a responsibility to be shared by all." - David Packard, Co-Founder, Hewlett Packard.