NTT announced today a technology partnership with Red Bull Basement, which aims at enabling the next generation of entrepreneurs to innovate with purpose. Building a better future means creating tech solutions that will drive a positive change.
Empowering students to change the world through innovation. This is what it’s all about.
Launched in 2015 in São Paulo, Red Bull Basement supports social innovators using technology to tackle social and environmental issues at universities. In a year where connecting through technology has been more important than ever, Red Bull Basement decided to virtualize the program with a partner who has a proven track record of supporting companies through digital transformations and providing a one-of-a-kind online experience.
NTT enables the next generation of entrepreneurs to innovate for purpose #TechforGood. Read the press release here https://hello.global.ntt/en-us/newsroom/ntt-ltd-partners-with-red-bull-basement).
Red Bull Basement empowers students in all areas of study to use innovation to drive change.
The program encourages the next generation of diverse thinking and innovation and is centered around finding solutions to the world’s problems using technology to create positive change. Red Bull Basement’s purpose-led brand and passion for innovation caught NTT’s attention when they realised the potential for scale and inclusion that NTT’s virtual platform offers over a physical conference center. By virtualizing the event and breaking down location-specific and physical space barriers to entry, both partners hope to see even more diversity in thinking.
What is the root of innovating with purpose?
My personal take on innovation and purpose:
- First of all it, it means using purpose to drive innovation. The famous innovator’s dilemma is at the center of everyone’s attention. When new technologies cause great firms to fail! Innovation in 2020 and beyond with purpose is the only sensible way to go.
Purpose means a reason for doing something that appeals to our common sense. It is what is right to do and what is worthwhile. Purpose can be a commercially-driven approach to improve speed, profitability or reduce waste. Purpose can be a moral idea that one follows. Purpose can be the desire to discover something new. Purpose can be a relentless desire for ever-better products. - Innovators with a strong sense of purpose are likely to be more aware of their environment and sensitive to how it changed in the past, is in the present and will be in the future. That sensitivity is truly linked to purpose. Sensible innovators are bound to provide a moral response to social and technological changes that are taking place around them. They break through rules and conventions, and strive for a clear sense of identity and purpose.
- Unhappy with the status quo. This if often the catalyst for purpose-led innovation. Innovators search out solutions to problems. Being unhappy with the situation makes them try and try again. This persistence is crucial to innovation and is what make innovators break-through.
- Cohesion using innovator’s inner force improve the society or community drives innovators in order to overcome frustrations, not only with the status quo, but primarily wtih their moral obligation to make the world better. A true response to water purification or desalination is an example of why innovators put forward their moral obligation to help their friends in village to entire regions or countries.
- Creating new rules of the game. Purpose-driven innovation is the only way to change the rules of the game. It creates an “unfair advantage”. That advantage boosts the innovator’s solution against other ideas. It generates a cutting-edge advantage by playing with new rules that do not exist (yet). Creating a circular economy is the paramount example of how purpose can close the loop (or create an endless one) in relation to the environment or recycling.
- Passion. This is often an element that innovators cannot explain. They can’t explain why they are driven to reach a goal. It is linked to their inner force to fulfil a duty to improve things or find new ways of dealing with things.
Sensitivity, unhappy with the status quo, moral obligation, creating new rules and passion are the drivers for innovators to change the world. Red Bull Basement and NTT enable students at university to pack it all into a programme that help them unlock their potential and do good to the world with technology. The programme is split in 4 phases:
- Application phase: NTT will host virtual launchpad events using its Intelligent Workplace technology solutions, as teams innovate to address a variety of issues inspired by the 17 United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (Global Goals).
- Voting and selection phase: In addition to the shortlisted teams, NTT will select a wildcard team who demonstrates their commitment to innovative thinking and will take them to the Global Workshop.
- Development phase: As part of NTT’s investment, NTT’s Venture Capital arm and 25 experts from across its business will host mentoring sessions and co-creation workshops, further providing the teams with the tools and technology they need to succeed.
- Global Workshop: In the final phase of the competition, NTT experts will serve as panelists who listen to the final pitches and select the winning team.
Check out https://basement.redbull.com/en-us for all details and application.
I can only encourage any student or group of students who believe that technology can change the world to apply. I’m thrilled to join the expert team of this programme on the topics of entrepreneurship and digital commerce. I hope I’ll be able to coach students and bring them to their best to make the world a better place.
Note: read about the winner of the 2020 edition of the Red Bull Basement in my blog post Before You Start Funding Your Idea.
Stay well, stay safe and innovate to improve the world!
This article was also posted on LinkedIn. Read other articles about entrepreneurship, ecommerce, marketplaces and technology.
