Six challenges faced by six private companies and government bodies in Gauteng were part of the pilot phase of the Innovation Hub’s Solution Exchange platform, says Innovation Hub CEO McLean Sibanda.
The platform formalises the connections between organisations seeking solutions and individuals and small or large companies or bodies offering those solutions, as well as ensuring the protection of all parties and their intellectual property rights.
The solutions could result in the establishment of more formal business relationships, or could be implemented as a one-off service to solve a specific, narrowly defined problem, says innovation management company Research Institute for Innovation and Sustainability CEO Dr Audrey Verhaeghe.
The process rewards the innovators, inventors, entrepreneurs, researchers, small businesses and large organisations for providing solutions and acts as a catalyst to speed up the process of generating solutions for problems faced by the Gauteng organisations, she says.
The deadline for individuals, companies or research bodies to provide solutions for the first six challenges is February 3. Documents detailing the challenges can be downloaded from the Innovation Solution Exchange’s website.
The first challenge was brought forward by paper and pulp giant Sappi, which sought not only improved purification methods to increase the chemicals derived from its biomass raw materials, but also potential consumers for the fine chemicals, said Sappi Technology Centre manager Charlie Clarke.
The second challenge, from the City of Tshwane, sought to prevent electrical meters from being bypassed. The solution had to be tamperproof, flexible and scalable. The second phase of the challenge would include protecting its electric cabling network from tampering.
State-owned rail company Transnet wanted to eliminate the possibility of drivers ignoring level-crossing control measures at 6 500 level crossings on its railway system. Solutions could include hydraulic booms, retractable bollards or any other system that would prevent drivers from crossing while a train was moving.
The Honeydew policing cluster, which has an information and control centre connecting six police stations in the north-western suburbs of Johannesburg, wanted to enable citizens to report crimes in informal settle- ments and underserviced areas when cellphones and landlines were unavailable. The system should enable the speedy reporting of crime and reduce nonreporting and long delays.
The fifth challenge was issued anony- mously and sought solutions for active and intelligent packaging for fruit and vegetables that would protect the fruit and vegetables and help with logistics and shipping. Solutions could include colour-changing inks to track parcels, antimicrobial packaging, or intelligent packaging to enable quality control of temperature changes across a logistics chain.
Governmental body the Centre for Public Service Innovation required a solution for patients who received duplicate prescription medicines from separate health facilities. The solution had to identify when a person picked up a duplicate medicine prescription and had to be rolled out within a short time.
Individuals, entrepreneurs, companies, government bodies and scientists from Gauteng, neighbouring provinces and Zambia, Mozambique and Botswana attended the event.