GreenXchange: Crowdsourcing Social Innovation

Social innovators have long talked about a day when corporate rivals might be able to team up, legally, on social innovation projects, sharing some of their best ideas in a common place to benefit society.

Sound pie-in-the-sky? Maybe so. But if it succeeds, GreenXchange would be a first big step in that direction. Launched officially last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, GreenXchange (GX) is a Web-based knowledge exchange backed by 10 companies and social enterprises, including Nike, Best Buy, and Creative Commons (the San Francisco nonprofit that works to expand the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and share). GreenXchange's seven other backers include Yahoo!, IDEO, Mountain Equipment Co-op, salesforce.com, 2degrees, the Outdoor Industry Association, and nGenera, a corporate strategy think tank.

First conceived in Davos last year, GreenXchange is encouraging companies working on sustainability to share their research, for social good and profit. It is pushing to revolutionize the rules of the game on the sharing of intellectual property -- and at a time when businesses everywhere are allocating larger shares of their investment dollars to social innovation.

Skeptical? To be sure, rival companies in the same market may not want to share the research and patents they have, but what's to say that companies in different fields couldn't benefit from that very same research without posing a competitive threat to each other?

Let's say, for example, that Nike has done extensive research on the efficiency of air pressure in sneaker design. Why shouldn't a company that makes truck tires apply that patent in a way that creates greener tires, without harming Nike's sales? Nike would be able to draw up a contract letting the tire company take a peek at its patents in this area, but exclude other sneaker makers.

Or, why not let several sneaker-making companies team up to create a more eco-friendly shoebox that will benefit the entire sneaker industry? [Participants on any one project would be bound by contracts spelling out access and profit issues, among others.]

This type of collaboration is what GreenXchange hopes to encourage, and backers are optimistic it will catalyze the concept of "innovation communities" within and across industries. The benefit: for entire industries and sectors to be able to pinpoint what knowledge is missing and where breakthroughs are already occurring. As more patents are added to the pool, backers say, the exchange could be used more widely as both a source of social innovation and a knowledge-sharing archive for all who care to participate.

For starters, though, GreenXchange backers are focused on the environment. To get things started, Nike has committed to placing more than 400 of its sustainability patents into the commons for potential sharing projects. Mark Parker, Nike president and CEO, acknowledged that at first, Nike's lawyers opposed the Xchange, "but they've come around, seeing that this could bring competitive advantage." Indeed, any improvements made to its patents via the commons will be available to Nike, Parker says. John Wilbanks, VP for Science at Creative Commons, says his interest in the concept is being fueled by a desire to end widespread duplication of effort and "wasted resources" by companies working on sustainability. "We need to make it easier for individuals, companies, academia, and researchers to collaborate and shre best practices," he told the Davos gathering.

What do you think? Is it possible -- and/or desireable -- for companies to team up in this way for the common good? What could be the pitfalls?

Let us hear from you.