A new innovation platform seeks to foster collaborative innovation and design for sustainability projects.

Innonatives, launched by the Sustainability Maker Project, combines open innovation and design, crowd-sourcing, crowd voting, crowd funding, an online shop, and an international expert system. It's free to join and functions by carrying out sustainability-related design and innovation projects covering everything from products to services and communication.

The platform can be used as an educational tool; for instance to ask students to work on the sustainability challenges that are posted on the platform. Or, you can post your own sustainability projects to be carried out by students and other innovators. The platform also acts as an expert system and evaluation tool for sustainability relevance.

Innonatives is currently in its test beta phase, so you can hop over to the website and take a look at all the exciting stuff to come. The first three open innovation for sustainability challenges are:

Communication/ Animation Challenge: to create a video clip that explains in an inspiring way how Sustainability and open innovation are connected and how innonatives works. There is prize money of 3000, 1500 and 750 Euros for this project (click here).
Product/Brand Design Challenge: Sustainable Design with Coconut Soil! Design a sustainable product system for European gardening and horticultural markets using waste material from the coconut industry. Click here.
Product-Service Design Challenge for low-income communities: Sustainable Kitchen Challenge is spearheading a project for low-income housing in Brazil. Click here.