Crowdsourcing helps corporations scale innovative solutions for greater impact

Pooling the knowledge and resources of a diverse array of stakeholders can help solve huge unmet needs in society, research shows.

As pressure mounts on companies to look beyond profit and tackle pressing societal issues, there is a need for innovative solutions that pool the knowledge and resources of a diverse array of stakeholders to generate impact on a grander scale.

The private sector is a critical part of this process. It has already notched up some successes in terms of scaling up local solutions into global movements (think how Denmark helped pioneer wind energy and the nation’s local champions Vestas and Ørsted have become the world’s biggest maker of wind turbines and offshore wind-farm developer, respectively). However, global progress is simply too slow, given the urgency of the challenges.  

To take one example, the UN Environment Program recently warned that climate targets are falling far short of the 45% drop in carbon emissions needed by 2030 to keep…