Open Alchemy was a collaborative innovation project involving non-competing clients of software company Oracle.
Oracle’s clients, Arup, BBC, BP, BT, Cancer Research UK, the Department for Transport, Interbrand, Lloyds TSB, NHS, Pfizer, Rolls Royce, Unilever, Virgin Atlantic and Vocalink, were asked to consider a series of scenarios to act as a starting point for new ideas. These included issues such as brand, digital identity, networks, and personalised information provision.
NESTA and Oracle designed an online collaborative tool to make it easy for participating companies to brainstorm ideas and invite suggestions from their colleagues.
Once the corporates had three strong ideas they met for a collaborative workshop to develop the ideas. The workshop was facilitated by innovation consulting and insight firm innovaro and the corporates worked with a range of SMEs, entrepreneurs and experts specialising in brand, digital identity, networks, and personalised information.
At the end of the workshop the corporates selected their best ideas and used them to generate a series of commercially viable concepts.
The Open Alchemy participants continued to collaborate to work-up five of the new concepts into business plans capable of being developed into new products and services.
Oracle and its clients NHS, Pfizer, CRUK, BBC, and BT have developed WellBe, a points-based wellness programme designed to incentivise the public to adopt healthier behaviour.
Oracle and LiveWork are developing a new online collaboration tool for the NHS that allows professionals working on similar issues or illnesses to collaborate and share information.
