Welcome to the Crowd: The Power of Humanitarian Crowd-Solving
Dartmouth Engineering, June 6, 2023 – The Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College published an article about humanitarian crowd-solving and how Harry Sangree, our Founder, steered SeaFreight Labs into this line of work. The article features an excellent graphic that instantly communicates the essence of 'crowd-solving'. Read the full article HERE.
Case Study of Habitat for Humanity's 2020-2022 Crowd-Solving Project
Wazoku, January 2023 – SeaFreight Labs served as Project Advisor to Habitat for Humanity on four crowd-solving projects launched during 2020 and 2021. These projects were sourced from India, Kenya, Mexico and the Philippines. This 38-page case study includes input from leaders of all four projects, Wazoku and SeaFreight Labs. Read the full report HERE.
Malaria Prevention Design Challenge: Final Assessment Report and Recommendations
Habitat for Humanity and Kenya Medical Research Institute, October 2022 – Habitat for Humanity and the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) jointly published the results of controlled field testing of the winning design of the 2021 open-innovation challenge soliciting low-cost retrofitting ideas to dramatically reduce the number of mosquitoes that could enter typical low-income homes in malaria-prone areas of Kenya. The tests found that "on average, there was an 89.09% reduction in mosquito numbers entering the modified huts compared to unmodified huts." Read the full report HERE. SeaFreight Labs is Project Advisor on this challenge.
Innovating Better Together: Crowdsourcing to Solve Global WASH Issues
World Vision, July 17, 2022 – World Vision wrote a nice article about the partnership of SeaFreight Labs and World Vision since 2020 in using crowd-solving to solve some long-standing problems in WASH (WAter, Sanitation and Hygiene). Read the article HERE.
World Vision-USA Highlights SeaFreight Labs in their 2021 Partners Year in Review
World Vision, July 2022 – World Vision USA published their "Corporate and Foundations Year in Review 2021" and highlighted the work of SeaFreight Labs alongside major global brands including Merck, Baxter, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and a few other smaller organizations. We are honored to partner with World Vision on their work and pleased to be in such good company. See page 17 of the document HERE. (NOTE: The document loads slowly so you may need to wait 10-15 seconds before it is visible)
World Vision Announces Winner of Innovation Challenge to Monitor Free-Chlorine in Rural Piped-Water Systems
World Vision, January 31, 2022 – World Vision, the Christian humanitarian organization, announced the winner of their crowd-solving challenge to improve water-quality monitoring in Africa. The challenge solicited designs to dramatically reduce the cost of continuously monitoring the levels of free chlorine in rural piped-water systems. Each finalist was invited to build a working proof of concept. Read the press release announcing the winner HERE. Read about the winning solution and the winning solver HERE.
Pledge 1% Selects SeaFreight Labs as "Community Member of the Month"
Pledge 1% Community, December 29, 2021 – Our Founder and President, Harry Sangree, was honored for his work serving as an Early Adopter member of the new Pledge 1% Community. This is a new program of the Pledge-1% movement to create greater connections between companies and leaders who take the 1% Pledge. Read the interview with Harry HERE.
Habitat for Humanity Announces Winner of Philippine Challenge
Business World, September 29, 2021 – Habitat for Humanity announced the winner of their open- innovation challenge that sought breakthrough ideas for how to retrofit homes with no foundations more earthquake- and typhoon-resilient for less than US$300. SeaFreight Labs served as Project Advisor on the project. At a virtual awards ceremony, a team from the University of the Philippines was selected the winner from 81 submissions. Read the complete story HERE.
InnoCentive Launches World Vision Challenge to Attract Additional Investment to Clean Water, Sanitation and Hygiene
Wazoku, July 16, 2021 – SeaFreight Labs, Innocentive and World Vision are working together to drive the invention of a new business model that could multiply World Vision's planned 2021-25 investment of US$1 billion in water, sanitation & hygiene into a far greater investment. "Just as Jesus multiplied two fishes and five loaves into enough to feed 5,000 people, World Vision is looking to greatly multiply their planned investments so that multitudes of additional people might benefit from improved water, sanitation and hygiene services." Read the press release HERE. Visit the challenge HERE.
World Vision Announces Winners of Innovation Challenge to Provide Global Sanitation Solutions to Rural Families
World Vision, June 29, 2021 – World Vision, a leading Christian humanitarian organization, announced today that they selected three winners of their recent crowdsolving challenge seeking improved sanitation solutions. This was the first of four World Vision challenges where SeaFreight Labs is serving as Project Advisor. The three winners each submitted a solution that met the challenge criteria of safely managing human sanitation for a rural household for less than US$45. Read the press release HERE.
InnoCentive Launches World Vision Challenge to Revolutionize
Process for Counting of Improved Latrines
Wazoku, June 10, 2021 – SeaFreight Labs, Innocentive and World Vision are working together to find a dramatically better way to count the number of improved latrines in a community. The goal is to reduce costs and execution time while retaining accuracy so that World Vision can perform annual status checks of community progress in universal latrine coverage. Read the press release HERE. Visit the challenge HERE.
FAST COMPANY Honors SeaFreight Labs with an Honorable Mention Award in the 2021 World Changing Ideas Competition
Fast Company, May 4, 2021 – SeaFreight Labs is awarded an "Honorable Mention" in the "Best World Changing Ideas - North America" category of FAST COMPANY's 2021 World Changing Ideas Awards. The honor is for the submission titled "Crowd-Solving for Global Humanitarian Nonprofits. SeaFreight Labs was selected for this honor from a pool of more than 4,000 entries. FAST COMPANY is a leading progressive business publication with 750,000 subscribers and over 12 million monthly web visitors. See the entire list here. Read about Humanitarian Crowd-Solving HERE.
InnoCentive Launches Open Innovation Challenge with Habitat for Humanity to Inexpensively Harvest Drinking Water in Mexico
Wazoku, April 6, 2021 – SeaFreight Labs, InnoCentive and Habitat for Humanity are working together on a challenge to seek low-cost ideas to use rainwater and other sources for drinking water in urban areas of Mexico. Read more.
InnoCentive Launches Open Innovation Campaign with Habitat for Humanity to Find Solutions to Prevent Mosquito Bites Across Africa
Wazoku, March 9, 2021 – SeaFreight Labs, InnoCentive and Habitat for Humanity are working together on a challenge to solicit ideas on a new and novel way to prevent malaria - reduce the number of mosquitos that actually bite the people at risk. Read more.
SeaFreight Labs: The Power of Collaboration to Drive Success
Pledge 1%, December 1, 2020 – Pledge-1%, an organization that encourages companies to make giving back a priority, highlighted the work of SeaFreight Labs in a blog posting about us. This blog was one of 58 released today as part of the #GivingTuesday effort by Pledge-1% to highlight the work of the over 12,000 pledge-taking companies participating in the movement. SeaFreight Labs is included along with household names including Slack, Salesforce Ventures, Yelp Foundation, Atlassian and Crunchbase. Read more.
Habitat for Humanity Launches Challenge to Find Innovative Solutions for Sustainable Construction and Demolition Waste Management
Wazoku, November 17, 2020 – Habitat for Humanity, supported by SeaFreight Labs, is soliciting solutions to drive widespread re-use and recycling of construction and demolition (C&D) waste. This new challenge focuses on the first steps of utilizing C&D waste, which includes estimation and segregation of waste material and the initial logistics of waste utilization in the construction supply chain. Read more.
SeaFreight Labs and Habitat for Humanity Use Crowdsourcing Platform InnoCentive to Seek Innovative Solutions to Global Housing Challenges
Habitat for Humanity, October 12, 2020 – Habitat for Humanity announced a project in which it is "teaming up with SeaFreight Labs to leverage open innovation for ideas to help improve the quality of homes in communities around the world in need of decent, affordable shelter". Visit the Press Room at Habitat for Humanity. Read more.
Crowd-Solving Worked in 1714. Why Not Try It Again?
Splash 247, December 9, 2019 – The existential maritime problem of the 1700s was a captain’s inability to accurately determine his longitude, leading to tens of thousands of deaths from shipwreck. This problem was solved through the use of a public challenge. The article suggests that the maritime industry utilize the same powerful process to help achieve zero-carbon maritime operations. By Harry Sangree. Read more.
Let’s Bring Open Innovation to the Maritime Industry
Global Maritime Forum, November 20, 2019 – It has been over 300 years since the maritime industry used crowd-solving in a meaningful way. The technology to run a challenge has improved dramatically in that time and has recently been used successfully in other industries by some of the largest organizations in the world. Can 2020 be the year that our industry applies this powerful process to obtain dramatic results on our most important problems? By Harry Sangree. Read more.
Crowd-Sourcing Solutions for Container Shipping?
Journal of Commerce, September 6, 2019 – INTTRA and CargoSphere vet seeks to provide container lines and freight forwarders with a new crowd-sourced path to innovating solutions for systemic container shipping problems. By Eric Johnson. Read more.
Tapping the Wisdom of Crowds
American Shipper, September 5, 2019 – SeaFreight Labs is partnering with InnoCentive to use “crowd-solving” and the lure of prizes to help carriers and forwarders solve knotty transport problems. By Chris Dupin.