Rapid innovation in New York

Healthy eating reward points, the ‘No Lies' clothing brand, and ‘Banking for Life' were just some of the top ideas that came out of a rapid innovation session that we held in New York last night.

Bringing together a diverse group of 40 New York entrepreneurs from many different sectors, and setting them random sustainability challenges was always going to be a raucous affair, but it was also very productive with a wealth of good ideas being discussed.

We set the scene with a brief discussion of the sustainability challenges facing us, and the need for innovations that will enable us to meet the needs of a growing population with limited environmental resource. We also considered some breakthrough innovations we're already familiar with and the things that have changed business and society - from the birth control pill, to the Model T Ford, to Netflix.

We gave our entrepreneurs sustainability challenges to work on, and a set of our disruptive innovation cards helped to brainstorm answers. The groups came up with a whole host of ideas for potential new businesses, and then pitched the best ones to the room.

So what about the solutions? Here were some of our favourites of the night:

• Healthy reward points: a reward system run by a local restaurant, which is connected to your smart phone. It knows how much you've exercised so helps adjust your order at the restaurant. If you've run five miles it offers you some cake.
• An investment model into a local cooperative restaurant, which is supplied by local urban farms, where owning shares also entitles you to eat there a certain number of times a week.
• And finally, ‘Banking for Life' where a series of healthy living initiatives allows you to earn reward points from your bank, which the bank match-funds. These are ploughed back into the community on further healthy living opportunities such as supporting sports clubs.

As well as getting hands-on experience of innovation techniques, our participants also got to meet a bunch of like-minded people working on different social and environmental issues. Given the buzz in the room, I'm pretty sure that the evening sparked some real opportunities for new collaborations and creating change.