ADB Open Innovation Challenges are an excellent tool for ADB to prompt new collaborations with startups and other innovative thinkers globally, and speed up innovation around specific needs and challenges. Furthermore, challenges may help form new partnerships to solve problems, shine a light on a neglected issue, encourage the building capacity of new innovators and support their market entry, and identify great new ideas and projects. They are also an exciting ADB funding method, through which ADB can find, adapt, and test new technology solutions to achieve positive outcomes in the Asia and Pacific region. 

ADB Information Technology Department has been organizing online and offline hackathons for the organization since 2018. After the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the globe, ADB ITD responded by starting a year-long Hackathon in April 2020, focused on shaping life in the new normal. The objective of the hackathon is to envision the new normal in light of potential long-term behavioral changes and encourage innovative digital ideas and solutions to address these shifts and their associated challenges. 

In the longer term, ADB’s goal is not just to run its challenges, but to partner with others to define the new normal in a region-wide context. “The bigger picture is that we at ADB want to be able to provide innovative solutions to the governments we are working with. They could throw us a problem which we can then crowdsource for them.” 

Are you interested in running a challenge with us? You may drop us a message at challenges@adb.org or fill out the information here.