Founded in 2010, OpenIDEO—IDEO’s open innovation practice—enables people worldwide to come together and build solutions for today’s toughest societal problems. Online and around the globe, OpenIDEO works with world-class partners to convene diverse communities that collectively develop ideas and accelerate social innovation. OpenIDEO’s platform expands on the power of crowdsourcing, equipping participants with resources, connections, and design tools to create real impact. After tackling dozens of topics ranging from food waste to girls’ education to Ebola, people everywhere are designing a better future with OpenIDEO.

Their idea is to offer an open innovation platform where people from all corners of the world collaboratively tackle some of the toughest global issues through launching Challenges, programs, and other tailored experiences.

A Challenge is a three-to-five month collaborative process that focuses attention on the topic and creates a space for community members to contribute and build off each other. This approach is modeled on IDEO’s design thinking methodology.

OpenIDEO is a place where people design better, together for social good. It’s an online platform for creative thinkers: the veteran designer and the new guy who just signed on, the critic and the MBA, the active participant and the curious lurker. Together, this makes up the creative guts of OpenIDEO.

To become a place where good ideas gain momentum, OpenIDEO depends on participation — your inspirations, his comments, her concepts, our design process. It’s these efforts, these big and small moments of sharing and collaboration, that make this platform a dynamic resource for tackling significant global challenges.

IDEO, a design and innovation firm, developed OpenIDEO as a way to include a broader range of people in the design process through inspiration, concepting, and evaluation.