"To keep the intellectual property with the developer is of great importance for Agorize," say Lisa Leibold and Aurélie Wen from Agorize in Canada, as we speak about open innovation and hackathons as a service against the background of one of their latest projects, the "Discover AI challenge: Sustainable Life" for Microsoft Canada. How do you describe open innovation processes from your point of view: How did they evolve and what are they about? Open innovation includes the public into innovation processes, it utilizes resources of an ecosystem as well as from the public to develop new ideas and innovate. In comparison, the traditional innovation approach is that of a closed innovation, where companies want to protect their knowledge and innovation is seen as the business of conventional experts. This process started to open up more and more.

Those are a few of the ideas pitched tonight at Mercedes-Benz's Innovation Challenge, a startup competition staged this evening at the Vance plant's training center. Mercedes-Benz opened its doors to firms from around the world to dream up solutions to challenges on the factory floor. And engineers and innovators came back this evening with their own ideas. Teams were split into startup companies and student & professional groups. Cash prizes will be awarded to winners of the challenge.