In late 2012, the Foundation for Agrarian Innovation (FIA), an agency of the Ministry of Agriculture of the Government of Chile (MINAGRI), launched an open innovation competition to encourage the creation of innovative solutions and promote agribusiness growth.

The competition, called “La Papa” (“The Potato”), challenged participants to develop new product ideas and solutions for Chile’s agricultural and forestry sectors that could then be developed and brought to market. Over 3,100 participants and 645 ideas were submitted during the initial phase of the live campaign through Brightidea’s innovation platform. The program was implemented by TRANSFORME Consultores, who also provided consultation for managing and operating the program to the Center.

During the evaluation phase, a team from the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Adolfo Ibáñez University in conjunction with FIA professionals, judged the submitted ideas through several rounds. The top 12 teams were selected, and delivered detailed guidelines for their prototypes along with estimated budget to develop their ideas.

Today, the first competition winners were announced – 6 winning teams will each receive $10,000 USD from the FIA to develop their prototypes. The winning initiatives are:

• Data Logger C-Trax
• Gourmet
• Spyfire
• Bocali
• Curanto Chilote Packaging
• Water Purification System for Agriculture in the Desert

In July, the 6 winning teams will present their prototypes before the final committee, and 3 projects will be selected to each receive over $4 million USD through FIA financing to implement their projects and launch them in the market.

We’re excited to see the government of Chile leveraging the power of crowdsourcing to identify effective and sustainable solutions to modern Agricultural challenges and look forward to watching the contest in its next phases.