Fireworks at first ideas competition for machine-to-machine communications

• 770 creatives from more than 90 countries are participating at www.ideabird.com
• Megatrend machine-to-machine picks up speed with 626 ideas
• Cellular-enabled warning triangle, remote-controlled parking disc, pizza tracker, winning at hide-and-seek

The first ideas competition in the machine-to-machine communications (M2M) field has received an excellent international response: 626 ideas were submitted from more than 90 countries for the application area "Finding and following" on the www.ideabird.com interaction platform. Overall, nearly 80,000 people visited the platform and 770 created accounts to discuss and debate on the proposals. A total of 4,022 ratings and 4,632 comments were submitted and 1,235 messages were sent.

The jury awarded first place to an idea from Portugal, a cellular-enabled warning triangle. By automatically notifying other drivers, it increases safety on the roads. Second place was awarded to the proposal of a remote-controlled parking disc. By sending a timely reminder that the parking period is about to end, parking tickets will soon be a thing of the past. In response to the variety and creativity of the ideas, the jury decided to award two prizes for third place: the pizza-tracker, an idea from Germany, lets customers track the status of their orders online. This will help improve the quality of delivery services in future. A suggestion from Serbia takes the idea of hide-and-seek into the geocaching age with M2M. The four winners share the prize of $10,000 and will be invited to participate in an innovation workshop.

The most ideas were submitted from India, Germany, the U.S., Nigeria and Pakistan. The interactive platform www.ideabird.com supported the collective generation, presentation, publishing and rating of the ideas through the community with its uncomplicated, intuitive user interface. Existing concepts can be improved and enhanced by the community.

To continually foster the development of new ideas, trends and applications in the area of M2M, a consortium of four partners, Deloitte, Deutsche Telekom, HYVE and RWTH Aachen University, launched this first M2M ideas competition for seeking and finding objects, persons, and animals on an open innovation platform created specifically for this purpose.

M2M is considered one of the technological megatrends in the communications industry. M2M is opening new areas of application such as digital signage, telematics or tracking and tracing, logistics and security. Future competitions will help capture the enormous potential of this technology for the different areas of use, incrementally, through new ideas.

Deloitte
Deloitte provides audit, tax, consulting, and financial advisory services to companies and institutions spanning multiple industries. With a globally connected network of member firms in more than 150 countries, Deloitte brings world-class capabilities and high-quality service to clients, delivering the insights they need to address their most complex business challenges. Deloitte's approximately 182,000 professionals are committed to becoming the standard of excellence.

Deloitte employees have pledged to support a corporate culture based on four guiding principles: first-class performance, mutual support, absolute integrity and creative interaction. They work in an environment that offers challenging tasks and a wide range of development options and in which every employee actively and responsibly contributes toward meeting the trust expectations of customers and the general public.

Deloitte relates to Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, a UK private company limited by guarantee, and its network of member firms, each of which is a legally separate and independent entity. Please see www.deloitte.com/about or www.deloitte.com/de/UeberUns for a detailed description of the legal structure of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited and its member firms.

Deutsche Telekom
Deutsche Telekom is one of the world’s leading integrated telecommunications companies with around 129 million mobile customers, around 34 million fixed-network lines and over 17 million broadband lines (as of March 31, 2012). The Group provides fixed-network, mobile communications, Internet and IPTV products and services for consumers, and ICT solutions for business and corporate customers. Deutsche Telekom is present in around 50 countries and has over 235,000 employees worldwide. The Group generated revenues of EUR 58.7 billion in the 2011 financial year – more than half of it outside Germany (as of December 31, 2011). CEO René Obermann is personally responsible for the "Products and Innovation" (P&I) area. This division, with a total of nearly 4,000 employees, focuses its innovation activities on growth areas in digital markets to shape trailblazing technical and societal trends. As such, Deutsche Telekom supports this promising innovation competition as the leading innovation driver in the area of M2M solutions.
For further information about Deutsche Telekom’s innovative M2M approach, please visit www.telekom.com/M2M. If you want to learn more about Deutsche Telekom as a whole, please check www.telekom.com.

Hyve
As an author of the term customized innovation, HYVE is a pioneer in the fields of open innovation and Web 2.0. Its goal is to involve the customer in every step, from the concept of the project to the finished product. HYVE helps companies enhance their innovation by working closely with the very customers who will be utilizing the products.
HYVE - based in Munich (Germany) and founded in 2000 - has many years of experience in the context of developing and managing open innovation platforms, establishing idea management systems, conducting social media activities, and building and managing creative innovation communities. The platform technology is based on the HYVE IdeaNet®, a web based idea- and innovation software, which has already successfully been applied to several industries for the purpose of generating new ideas and innovations. On HYVE’s platforms, participants can share their ideas and knowledge, co-create and evaluate submissions, find partners, and discuss openly.

RWTH Aachen
The RWTH Technology and Innovation Management Chair was established in 1990 by the School of Business and Economics of RWTH Aachen University. It is one of the first management research chairs in the German-speaking world, whose research and teaching interests are focused on management aspects of product development and launch, as well as services and business models. Prof. Frank Piller has led this chair since 2007. RWTH-TIM has built a worldwide reputation for research on open innovation and customercentric value creation. About 20 full-time researchers work on these and related topics, funded by projects from the German Research Foundation (DFG), the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWI), the European Community, the Ministry for Innovation, Science and research for the Federal State of North-Rhine Westphalia and from various companies. RWTH-TIM is part of RWTH Aachen University, one of Europe’s leading institutions for science and research, and Germany's largest university of technology and engineering. Work conducted in the research centers at RWTH Aachen University is strongly oriented toward the current needs of industry. This has led to numerous innovations, patents, and licenses. Today, RWTH Aachen University has about 30,000 students and employs more than 10,000 researchers and staff.