LAUNCH 2020 Summit: Genius

For the four LAUNCH founding partners, NASA, Nike, USAID, and State Department, LAUNCH is the Collective Genius for a Better World. Nike’s LAUNCH 2020 Summit is sheer genius!

“Our society has reached a point where its progress and event its survival depend on our ability to organize the complex and to do the unusual.” James Webb, former NASA Administrator

Last week, Nike hosted the LAUNCH 2020 Summit in “sunny” Portland  – and sunny it was, both in weather and collaborative engagement. The purpose for the Summit was two-fold: 1) introduce the new seven-year systems focus on materials, makers, and access; and 2) debut the LAUNCH 2013 Systems Challenge. Our last four challenges featured water, health, energy, and waste solutions. This year’s challenge is focused on materials – which are crucial for supporting life outside the protection Earth’s atmosphere – as well as for gravity-bound Earthlings.

LAUNCH partner Alan Hurd of State Department announces the 2013 Challenge

One of the Summit’s highlights: Hannah Jones, Nike’s VP for Sustainable Business and Innovation, led a discussion about how creative humans can rise above the limits with certified limit-busters, Astronaut Ron Garan and Gold Medalist Joan Benoit Samuelson.

Ron Garan + Joan Benoit Samuelson + Nike’s Hannah Jones discussing triumph over limits.

LAUNCH 2020 Summit video screen for Astronaut Ron Garan

LAUNCH 2020 Summit video screen for Gold Medalist Joan Benoit Samuelson

Nike also featured an innovation showcase that included past LAUNCH innovations, Gram Power, Bioneedle, DTI-r, and “Born at LAUNCH” Carbon for Water  – among other innovations such as NASA’s Solar Sail and the Nike Flyknit.

Former LAUNCH Innovation: GramPower

Former LAUNCH Innovation: Bioneedle

“Born at LAUNCH” Innovation: Carbon for Water

The AWESOME-sauce Nike team created an immersive process called the Systems Innovation Experiment (SIX) to engage our Summit participants in a decision-making atmosphere that reflects fictional, yet realistic system choices. Team investment decisions were ranked in relation to profit, environmental impact, and social capital – with collaboration as the key to system change. The moral to the story: investments we make today greatly impact our future tomorrows.

Nike’s Dave Cobban takes the stage to discuss process.

I was given the opportunity to share the “Why NASA” story on stage during the first day of the Summit. I was “set free” from a scripted speech (due to a glitch in the teleprompter), so I have no idea what I actually said.  But, here are the notes of what I planned to say. Hopefully, I hit some of these points from stage….

For NASA, we look at LAUNCH as a Collaborative Innovation Incubator. In addition to serving as an alternate means to uncover early stage technologies, LAUNCH has become a testbed for new and unexpected ways of doing business in the government. We’re incubating new methods and processes to:

1. collaborate and partner with new communities outside our normal orbit of influence,
2. innovate new solutions to a more sustainable existence off-planet, and
3. broker ideas across diverse innovation clusters of creative thinkers.

Our mission is to enable off-planet citizens to live and work in the extremely hostile environment of space. Materials are key.

Think about it:  We take the materials for human existence with us when we leave our home planet for destinations beyond Earth – whether for orbiting outposts, planetary bodies, or asteroids. These materials must be reused, recycled, and recreated into anything and everything we need to fuel a self-sustaining biosphere – which could be a spacesuit, spacecraft or space colony. As you can imagine, resupply becomes less of an option the farther we travel away from home.

In essence: we need a fully sustainable, closed-loop system to support humans (on and OFF the planet).

At NASA, our issues mirror the struggles facing earthlings – scarce, dwindling, constrained natural resources – but our problem is magnified. We have no natural resources for our journey – except what we harvest along the way.

We’ve learned [during our occupation of Earth] that our ability to thrive as humans shouldn’t harm the planet that hosts us. Sadly, we have a parasitic relationship with Earth. What we want is a symbiotic partnership where Earth thrives because we live here!

 We see LAUNCH as the rocket fuel to reach this new reality.

Process: Nike’s Santiago Gowland + NASA’s Diane Powell + USAID’s Will Schmitt + Hannah Jones

With our LAUNCH 2013 Systems Challenge, I’m most excited about our potential to discover cool, futuristic multi-purpose synthetic or bio-synthetic, smart and/or self-healing materials, and technical fabrics with novel attributes that will enable makers (humans) to have access to the materials and data needed to make better choices for better lives.

Highest praise to Nike’s Santiago Gowland and his team for providing leadership for our LAUNCH shift toward systems thinking. Nike provided systems experience and research as the foundation for our new approach. The map below is just one glimpse of the work they’ve been doing with MIT to create a better understanding of the materials value chain.

LAUNCH 2020 Systems Map

As for the LAUNCH 2020 Summit, I have one word: WOW! The Nike team envisioned, produced, and magnificently hosted a gathering of system thought leaders to engage in the materials system, share expertise, and collaborate to bring about inspired solutions to intractable problems. I’m absolutely awed by Nike’s storytelling genius and professional muscle – crucial ingredients for the Summit’s success. They’re quite brilliant at leveraging the power of spoken word and compelling visuals. They created fabulous assets the LAUNCH team can use to help tell our story going forward, and inspired us to keep pushing through the pain – collaboration is quite messy, but WELL worth it! I’m honored to be part of the LAUNCH team and have the opportunity to take part in this process.

Nike “Word Power” Tower!

Nike, you guys ROCKet!! You’ve propelled us from a high school-level sports team to Olympic contenders – EXTREME performers of the magnificent kind!

Planetary CALL to ACTION: Earthlings, we need YOUR help. One of you has a mind-blowing solution to this challenge – one that we could never have imagined without you.  Please apply! If, by chance, you’re not the one, but you know who is, please share the LAUNCH Systems Challenge with your innovation networks. We can’t succeed without you.

Sir Paul McCartney

Remember, we’re in this journey together. Help us create a planet-friendly future.

LAUNCH: Collective Genius for a Better World

Remembering Rocket Man Jesco Von Puttkamer

Legendary Jesco von Puttkamer passed on Friday. As I was getting ready for work this morning, I remembered writing a blogpost about him back in 2010. We had shared the stage together on the “Future Directions” panel at the International Space University’s “Public Face of Space” Symposium in Strasbourg, France. After his talk, I saw Jesco in a new light. To honor his passing, I want to share what I wrote about him. I wish I could capture the twinkle in his eyes as he talked about his dream for Mars.

Exerpt:

I like to think of Jesco as the Forest Gump of space — always right on the fringes of every historical space moment. I’d never caught his passion before. Jesco’s presentation took us back to his years at the Marshall Space Flight Center, the very center of the space universe, the birthplace of all things space — until, that is, we learned the Soviet Union had their own space Capitol where they worked as feverishly as the Von Braun team to be #1 in space. The point of his talk: we can’t go forward without understanding where we’re coming from. 

Read more: Rocket Man Dreams of Mars

You can also read the NASA web feature on Jesco from last Friday.

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/people/features/von_puttkamer_obit.html

I hope you’re soaring in the stars now, Jesco. We’ll miss your iconic presence at NASA.

Stay tuned for LAUNCH: Beyond Waste

It’s finally here — LAUNCH: Beyond Waste! We’ve been working for the last six months to get to this point. We head out to Pasadena, California this week to hear from nine innovators with creative ways to create value from discarded products  – plastic bottles, human and plant waste, unused fabric, and more.

LAUNCH, for those of you who haven’t heard me talk about it before, is a social entrepreneurship enterprise that breaks new ground in public/private partnerships. We created the LAUNCH program three years ago to address large, sustainability-related challenges that no single government or commercial entity can solve alone. Our talented LAUNCH team searches for transformative innovations, which we connect with a collaborative group of thought leaders and experts which we call LAUNCH Council. LAUNCH Innovators are uniquely poised to accelerate their innovations for greater impact and scale by leveraging the advice, networks, and resources of the LAUNCH Council members and the global stage LAUNCH provides.

The ultimate goal of LAUNCH is a sustainable future for planet Earth and her citizens.

The LAUNCH: Beyond Waste forum is the fourth in a series of challenges, following Water, Health, and Energy. The LAUNCH team focused on waste as a challenge topic in order to address increasing strain on the planet’s limited resources. Global citizens, as well as explorers who leave Earth’s protection, share the need for creative solutions to the issue of waste — from designing for zero waste to revaluing existing waste from inefficient production and processes. LAUNCH: Beyond Waste addresses this global challenge.

I love the tagline from Anshu Gupta of Goonj, one of our innovators from India, who wants to transform the cash society into a trash society — meaning trash = revenue stream. Our western version: one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

Here are the cool movie posters our team (Trish and Lilly) created to represent each innovation we’ll feature at the forum.

Attero – LAUNCH: Beyond Waste innovator

Goonj – LAUNCH: Beyond Waste Innovator

Kiverdi – LAUNCH: Beyond Waste Innovator

Pylantis – LAUNCH: Beyond Waste Innovator

re:char – LAUNCH: Beyond Waste innovator

RecycleMatch – LAUNCH: Beyond Waste innovator

Sanergy – LAUNCH: Beyond Waste innovator

SEaB – LAUNCH: Beyond Waste innovator

Sirum – LAUNCH: Beyond Waste innovator

Attero: Attero is India’s first low cost, efficient metal extraction technology for e-waste. With an integrated recycling and refurbishing facility and proprietary metallurgical processes (patent pending), Attero is the only end-to-end e-waste recycling company in India.

Goonj: Using urban waste streams as a powerful development resource in rural India, Goonj is dedicated to saving lives, empowering people, and ensuring dignity for the underserved poor in rural India. Through its activities, Goonj helps to create a parallel economy that is not ‘cash based’, but ‘trash based.’

Kiverdi: Kiverdi offers a proprietary bioprocess that recycles waste carbon from a number of waste streams, including syngas (from forestry residue and landfills), stranded natural gas or agricultural residue, to produce drop-in fuels, oils and custom chemicals. Kiverdi’s industrial scale bioreactor allows the company to transform biomass into high value industrial products.

Pylantis: Pylantis is a bioplastics company with a proprietary process that combines organic fillers (waste) with plant plastic resins to create high waste content injection molded products capable of withstanding temperatures up to 140C. Pylantis produces a wide variety of products that provide a commercially viable alternative to environmentally unsustainable traditional petroleum-based plastic products.

re:char: re:char’s technology allows farmers worldwide to convert their waste into biochar, a carbon-negative soil amendment to grow more food and fight climate change.

RecycleMatch: RecycleMatch is the first global on-line marketplace for recycling that connects waste generators, recyclers, and manufacturers. The RecycleMatch platform finds the ‘highest and best use’ for recyclables and ‘waste’ byproducts in the market.

Sanergy: Sanergy provides quality sanitation facilities, efficient and effective waste collection services, and proper waste treatment in the slums of Kenya.

SEaB Energy: SEaB provides companies a turn-key waste to energy product which uses micro anaerobic digestion to convert organic waste into energy on-site at the source of the waste generation where the energy can be utilized continuously.

SIRUM: SIRUM disrupts the pharmaceutical supply chain by redistributing unused, unexpired medicine that would otherwise be destroyed.

You can follow along during the forum at the NASA MindMapr page. Learn more about the forum on the NASA website.

Discovery Rules Galactic Social Media Empire

Discovery Alexandria Flyover @bethbeck

On Tuesday, I watched the Space Shuttle Discovery piggyback over Old Town Alexandria with several hundred others who gathered at the waterfront. When Discovery appeared in the sky, I cried. The intensity of emotion that flooded over me took me totally by surprise. I thought I was over it — that I’d moved on after the final Space Shuttle mission. I was wrong. It hit me hard.

Shuttle Discovery over DC. Photo: NASA/Chris Gunn

On Thursday, I was scheduled to speak at the first ever #140cuse social media conference at Syracuse University in New York. My topic: Launching a Galactic Social Media Empire. The format for the conference is 10 minute presentations. You can browse the list of speakers on the #140cuse Conference website.

Badge from #140cuse Conference

“One must learn by doing the thing, for though you think you know it, you have no certainty until you try.” — Sophocles, 400 B.C.

After an emotion-filled experience with Discovery, I changed the focus of my talk from creation of a social media empire to the outcomes from a social space empire – specifically the #SpotTheShuttle campaign. Social media connected us in awe and wonder as we looked up to the skies to witness a seasoned spaceship flying by the power of her Earth-bound transport over the nation’s Capitol on her way to retirement at the Smithsonian Udvar-Hazy facility.

Discovery RULES the Galactic Social Media Empire!

Discovery #SpotTheShuttle @ThinkGeek

Discovery #SpotTheShuttle @ThinkGeek

Discovery #SpotTheShuttle @LauraBly

Discovery #SpotTheShuttle @ebuzzedge

Discovery #SpotTheShuttle @USAgov

Discovery #SpotTheShuttle @KelleyApril

Discovery #SpotTheShuttle @kachok

Discovery #SpotTheShuttle @DarrenMilligan

Discovery #SpotTheShuttle @WorldBankPhotos

Discovery #SpotTheShuttle @LisFace

Discovery #SpotTheShuttle @SenJohnThune

Discovery #SpotTheShuttle @jeff_foust

Discovery #SpotTheShuttle @CindyhM1

Discovery #SpotTheShuttle @raffg

Discovery #SpotTheShuttle @PapaBradstein

Discovery #SpotTheShuttle @almacy

Discovery #SpotTheShuttle @brookezigler

Discovery #SpotTheShuttle @datachick

Discovery #SpotTheShuttle @RobertPearlman

Discovery #SpotTheShuttle @charlieowen4

Discovery: @stevenyoungsfn #SpotTheShuttle

Farewell, dear Discovery. You are well-loved.

LAUNCH: Time to Stop Wasting

I’m flying high today. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy website hosted our LAUNCH: Beyond Waste blogpost authored by LAUNCH: Water Innovator and Astronaut Ron Garan: LAUNCHing Ideas for a Waste-less Tomorrow.

We’ve been refining LAUNCH over the last few years. This will be our fourth sustainability innovation forum. We’ve hosted LAUNCH: Water, LAUNCH: Health, and most recently, LAUNCH: Energy — all at the Kennedy Space Center. Now we’re moving from the east coast to the west coast. We’ll gather 35-ish thought leaders to hear and discuss ten game-changing solutions to the problem of waste at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory this July.

Waste is a huge issue for humans living on the planet, as well as those who live beyond the borders of Earth. In the developed world, we live in a throw-away society. We use a product (and sadly people, sometimes) and toss it when the newest model comes along. In the developing world, citizens take discarded objects, and give them new life. My daughter bought this soda can art from a market in South Africa.

South African Art: Plane from Recycled Fanta Can

To travel in space long distances, humans must take what they need for the journey. At $10,000/lb, we need to think long and hard about the essentials we send off the planet in our rocket-propelled biospheres.

We need creative minds to help think about designing a future with zero waste, and re-think waste in creative new ways to add redundant value.

LAUNCH: Beyond Waste is accepting proposals until May 15th. Be the change we need for a better tomorrow. Apply now at  http://challenge.launch.org.

Stop wasting time! It’s time to stop wasting.  

Let’s create a future with zero waste. I’ll leave you with a little Steve Miller Band….

Time Keeps on Slipping: Steve Miller Band

Very Spacey Social Media Week in DC

This week was social media week around the world. How cool to participate on the Breakfast Kickoff Panel, and our NASA Tweetup with Space Station Astronaut Ron Garan. Here is a snapshot of DC Social Media Week chatter: a little space on Earth.

Peter @Corbett3000 kicks off DC Social Media Week

Fellow Panelist @AlliHouseworth + Moderator Bonnie Shaw @bon_zai

Fellow Panelist Ryan Hill @Hirshorn

On Tuesday, NASA hosted three Space Station astronauts: Mike Fossum, Cady Coleman, and Ron Garan. They debriefed NASA Headquarters employees, met with Members of Congress and staff, and split off for separate events. Cady and Mike when to an event at the Air and Space Museum while Ron hosted space tweeps at the NASA tweetup at NASA Headquarters in downtown DC.

NASA tweetup Crowd. Photo: NASA/Carla Cioffi

Thanks for letting me share a few highlights from a great week! And a real treat for me: trending in DC during Social Media Week!

2011: My Top 10 iPhone Travel Fotos

In days gone by, I never left home without my camera bag stocked with film and lenses. With an iPhone, I travel so much lighter. I’m totally hooked on the hipstamatic app, which allows me to create a funky style without a darkroom or chemicals. With a simple shake of my iPhone, I can change camera lenses and film, though my favorite is the Hipstamatic John S lens and Kodot XGrizzled film.

Here are a few shots from my 2011 travels to the Space Tweetups in Germany and Italy, and the NASA tweetups at the Kennedy Space Center. The final two are from Washington DC, where I work and play. Enjoy!

Cologne, Germany

Space Tweetup: German Space Day train

Frankfort Airport

Roma Colosseo

Rome: Santa Maria Maggiore

ESA/ESRIN facility in Frascati, Italy

Cocoa Beach Sand Castles

Space Coast Space Melons

White House

Taxi window view of Washington Monument

2011 My Space: Top 10 Off-Planet Pics

View from Space Station: 16 Moonrises Each Day. Photo by Astronaut Ron Garan.

STS-134 Endeavour docked to Space Station.

Astronauts Mike Fincke reflected in Greg Chamitoff's visor. Final spacewalk by Space Shuttle crew.

STS-134 Space Shuttle Endeavor docked to Space Station: Photo by ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli

Mosaic of 48 Saturn images from the Cassini spacecraft.

STS-135 final mission to Space Station with US flag flown on STS-1.

STS-135 Atlantis docked to Space Station.

STS-135 Space Shuttle Atlantis leaving Space Station. Photo by Expediton 28 crew.

NASA's Spitzer space telescope shows "stellar nursery" around Orion's sword.

Comet Lovejoy: Photo by Space Station Expedition 30 Commander Dan Burbank.

TOO many images to choose from — which is a good thing. I hope these give you a flavor for space.

A special 2011 space thanks to Expedition 27/28 Astronaut Ron Garan for your visionary leadership for Fragile Oasis. Your willingness to share  your Space Station experience made space seem closer for those of us who are gravity-challenged. Elyse David, you are amazing. Thanks for keeping Fragile Oasis going 24/7. Donna Connell, you juggled all our requirements for LAUNCH and Fragile Oasis, and ensured we were totally covered contractually. You ROCKet! Ben Slavin, you’re my hero. I’m so glad you’re on the team. We wouldn’t have made it through the year without you.

I’m thankful for the opportunity to host several tweetups at our last Space Shuttle launches. I gained so many new friendships with space tweeps from around the world. I will treasure my time with the ESA/DLR colleagues at the two Space Tweetups across the ocean. Getting to know ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti was a highlight for 2011. I look forward to the time when she’s telling her stories from space.

Though we’ve closed out the Space Shuttle program, we continue to support a crew of six humans onboard Space Station 240 miles overhead, orbiting Earth every 91 minutes at a speed of 17,500 miles per hour. We have much work ahead in 2012. I’m eager to get started.

LAUNCH:Energy Super-Charged!

Sparks fly when innovative thinkers join together to address critical issues — like solving the world’s sustainability problems. LAUNCH gives us a unique opportunity to expand the Fellowship of Innovation with  ten new LAUNCH innovators, several dozen new LAUNCH Council Members, and new members of the LAUNCH team. What a privilege to recharge my creative batteries in this unique creative power source.

LAUNCH: Energy. Space Shuttle Endeavour waits for us over at the VAB.

It was only one week ago when NASA hosted LAUNCH: Energy at the Kennedy Space Center. Quick summary: ten innovators presented TED-like presentations to thought leaders in their various disciplines. Presentations are followed by high impact round table discussions with each innovator to probe, question, and evaluate the potential of each innovation.

LAUNCH: Energy is our third sustainability forum, following LAUNCH: Water and LAUNCH: Health. This was our first without a Space Shuttle launch to plan around. We’ve never hosted an event at the Kennedy Space Center during a holiday weekend. A government facility on a long weekend feels like a ghost town — eerily deserted. On the flip side, we had the place to ourselves. We FINally snagged the Mission Management Team meeting room, which was always our first choice. Planning events during Space Shuttle launches means prime real estate is already spoken for, and rightly so.

The press site looks so empty without a Space Shuttle launch.

We were fortunate to tour the Vehicle Assembly Building where post-retirement Space Shuttle Endeavour takes shelter. I have to admit, seeing her without her eyes, nose, and engines made me heartsick. How strange to stare in the face of history.

Space Shuttle Endeavour in her twilight years.

Many ask us: Why LAUNCH?

LAUNCH is our opportunity to problem-solve for an entire weekend with a group of innovative thinkers who care deeply about saving the world — social entrepreneurship at its best. As a bonus, we hopefully infect participants with our “Yes We Can” space virus that they, in turn, spread to their colleagues, friends and families.

Personally, LAUNCH is an intellectual treat. Brain candy!

LAUNCH is all about three things for NASA:

1. sharing the sustainability story of how life off this planet mirrors Earth — we have no natural resources in space which forces us to generate, collect, store, conserve, recycle, and manage our resources wisely — just like Earth but more extreme;
2. offering our problem-solving expertise and convening power of the NASA brand to host a crucial conversation with innovative problem solvers from around the world, and
3. promoting the emergence of transformative technology to solve problems that we share as global citizens of this planet, which may also address issues of long-duration life in the extremes of space.

Can you think of a more "problem-solving" setting?

Fellowship of Innovation

The ten innovators, who are now part of our innovation fellowship (and FAMILY) offer a variety of solutions to address energy sustainability challenges. The innovations include an economical fuel cell that can be recharged in a cooking fire, a thin flexible electrochromic film that can be applied to windows or surfaces to manage energy use, a low temperature heat activated fluid motion pump, a hydrokinetic turbine, a 96% efficient wood combustion cookstove process, a thermal energy battery for economical refrigeration in remote locations, a next generation fast-charging, long-lasting ultracapacitor battery, an integrated smart microgrid, a lightweight energy management system, and a solar-powered lantern/charger.

Solantern light, charging station, and solar charger.

Social Entrepreneurship

At its essence, LAUNCH is an enterprise grounded in social entrepreneurship — the effort to target large-scale transformational outcomes to make life better for a segment of the underserved populations on our planet.

Side Note: Social entrepreneurship is near and dear to my heart and the topic of my PhD research. Thanks to two separate bus rides from Kennedy Space Center back to our hotel in Orlando, I refined my research proposal — which was due immediately following LAUNCH: Energy. Council members Carrie Freeman of Intel and James Parr, formerly of IDEO and founder of Imaginals, introduced me to new concepts and potential research paths. I came home and rewrote my proposal.

LAUNCH is the innovation soup we create by pulling together just the right ingredients and turning up the heat — like a long bus ride at the end of a long day.

Hatching new ideas on ride to and from Kennedy Space Center.

Accelerator

And now, the real work begins. The Accelerator process, the next phase, is the critical follow-through leg of the LAUNCH journey, where our LAUNCH team 1) walks the Innovators through recommendations and insights shared by the Council, 2) refines and crafts a forward strategy, and 3) helps make connections necessary to solidify future support for each innovation. This process can last from four-six months, depending on the wishes of the innovator and the maturity of the innovation.

Thanks to all the LAUNCH team for all the long hours in planning, preparation, and execution. Thanks to all the Council Members for giving so generously of your time. Thanks especially to all our LAUNCH Innovators for caring enough about the future of our human race to create transformative solutions. You guys ROCKet!!

To borrow from Innovator Frank Wang, “Let’s get super-charged. BOOM!”

LAUNCH Innovator Frank Wang, "Boom! Super-charged!!"

Resources:

LAUNCH:Energy Flickr photos by LAUNCH team member Dennis Bonilla.

LAUNCH:Energy photos by LAUNCH Council Member Michael Catalano.

Forum Concludes with LAUNCH of New Ideas to Generage, Store and Distribute Energy by LAUNCH Council and team member Rebecca Taylor

LAUNCH: Energy Forum — An Update from Mission Control  by Department of State team member Vy Manthripragada.

LAUNCH: Energy Forum — Fueling Ideas, Propelling Innovation by Department of State team member Vy Manthripragada.

LAUNCHing an Energized Future by LAUNCH team member Lena Delchad.

Collective Genius for a Better World by NASA’s Open Gov team member Ali Llewellyn.

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LAUNCH: Energy

This week, we celebrate ten disruptive innovations with groundbreaking ideas for provision and access to sustainable energy for both the developed and developing world populations. LAUNCH: Energy is a challenge of particular interest to NASA. Issues of sustainable energy are part of every human and robotic mission off of the planet. We have NO natural energy sources off the planet, so the creation, storage, conservation and replenishing of energy is one of our challenges in exploring the unknowns of space.

View the LAUNCH video.

LAUNCH is a unique initiative formed with founding partners are NASA, USAID, Department of State, and NIKE to identify solutions to the world’s most urgent sustainability challenges. For the sustainability forums, we identify innovations poised to create transformational change in critical sustainability issues, and connect innovators to thought leaders and advisors. After the forum, we work with the innovators to take recommendations compiled during the 2+ days at the Forum, and work with the innovators to sift through and implement the recommendations to help propel the innovations toward success.

Here are the innovators:

1. Gram Power: Yashraj Khaitan – A micro/mini-grid solution for underserved communities that utilizes modular battery storage technology, energy management intelligence, and a pre-payment model.

2. Hydrovolts: Burt Hamner – An affordable “Flipwing” turbine that enables reliable hydroelectricity generation from canals and other managed-flow water courses. @Hydrovolts

3. Turbococinas: Rene Nunez Suarez – A revolutionary clean and efficient wood combustion cookstove.

4. Point Source Power: Craig Jacobsen – An economical fuel cell for emerging markets that allows battery charging in cooking pits or fires.

5. The Solanterns Initiative: Nina Marsalek, Renewable Energy Ventures – An initiative dedicated to replacing 1 million of Kenya’s kerosene lanterns with solar powered lights. @Solanterns

6. Powerzoa: Jamie Simon – A smart system that allows enterprise-level energy managers to automate control of energy down to the appliance level, stopping power waste. @powerzoa

7. Promethean Power Systems: Sorin Grama – A rural refrigeration system for commercial cold-storage applications in off-grid and partially electrified areas of developing countries. @PrometheanPower

8. NIFTE Pump: Mark Bryan, Thermofluidics – A pumping device that uses low-temperature heat to generate fluid motion with very few moving parts.

9. Flexible Electrochromic Film: Ashu Misra, ITN Energy Systems – A revolutionary flexible electrochromic film that allows active control of transmitted light and solar heating.

10. NanoTune Technologies: Frank Wang – An electrode innovation that produces ultracapacitors with five to seven times greater story capacity as conventional capacitors. @carbonmind

You can join us virtually at LAUNCH: Energy Forum on November 11-13 through U-stream link that will be posted on the LAUNCH website. You can also log on to MindMapr, which will have a twitter stream of the ongoing conversations between the LAUNCH Council and the ten innovators.

Crosspost on GovLoop.