The Water Council, the School of Freshwater Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the innovationExchange and inno360 have formed a partnership to rapidly expand Milwaukee’s global presence in water innovation and leadership.
By harnessing the power of today’s most advanced collaborative innovation technologies, together they plan to increase and improve public-private sector water-related collaborative research. The expert system will link the knowledge economy with the innovation economy by providing an interface for academics, industry, investors and manufacturers.
The Water Collaborative Innovation Platform, showcased during the Water Council’s recent Water Summit 2014 in Milwaukee, is a web-based search, innovation management and analytics tool that will enable water industry and academic researchers worldwide to conduct the most complete mining of water research information that has ever existed. The platform will access data from the largest landscape of resources and greatly increase the speed of information transfer – from weeks to hours – leading to increased research productivity.
“Quite simply, the Water Collaborative Innovation Platform supercharges any web search engine with advanced search algorithms, content categorization and visualization technologies to put Water Council members at a significant advantage when seeking global solutions and global leaders,” said Dean Amhaus, president and chief executive officer of The Water Council. “The water challenges that the world is facing are diverse and addressing these challenges is a daunting task. We believe that organizations such as The Water Council, enabled through this Platform, can pull the best minds from around the world in diverse disciplines to successfully address them.”
The Platform will be managed by The Water Council and powered by inno360, which is utilized by more than 20 of the world’s largest and most innovative global companies to address their most significant innovation challenges and opportunities. Incorporating the best practices of its founders and augmented by its initial collaborators, Procter & Gamble (P&G), General Mills and the U.S. Air Force.
Amhaus said inno360’s innovation management technology will enable The Water Council’s members to rapidly expand their reach and collaborative research with leading public and private organizations, foundations and academics around the globe. With the objective to solve the most pressing problems and needs facing water today and in the future, the Platform will be the first inno360 innovation exchange to access Elsevier’s Research Intelligence platform of extensive water-related content and unique analytics.
“For decades, the UW-Milwaukee School of Freshwater Sciences and its predecessors have been at the forefront of applied research with leading corporations, nonprofit organizations and other universities around the world,” said UWM interim chancellor Mark Mone. “We look forward to
using the inno360 technology to quickly expand the depth and breadth of research and innovation with our diverse partners.”
“Underpinning collaborative exchanges has been a core part of our technology from the beginning,” said Douglas Schaedler, inno360’s CEO. “Since inno360’s inception, we have been working with the world’s most innovative companies to solve the most pressing commercial problems of product, market and policy. Our clients have asked us to find ways to establish more effective research coordination and collaboration with academia. With the Water Collaborative Innovation Platform, we can now literally connect these dots on your computer screen.”
