Happy 2017 from LAUNCH!

From all of us at

LAUNCH, Happy 2017!

We couldn’t have done it without your support! Together we launched three global challenges aimed at disrupting the way we eat and the things we make. We had innovation convenings in Australia, Sweden, Timor-Leste and the US and held our first VR Development Hack!

We’re inspired by where we’ve been and looking forward to where we’ll take LAUNCH together in 2017.

Photo: 2016 LAUNCH Closing the Loop innovators in Malmo, Sweden

1. Closing the Loop We gathered in the historic city of Malmo, Sweden with our Nordic partners, six innovators, and some of the biggest public and private circular economy stakeholders in the Nordics including IKEA Group, Novozymes, Kvadrat, the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (3GF), the Danish EPA, and Region SkĂĽne. LAUNCH Closing the Loop, champions early stage technologies and innovative business models to disrupt material and resource flows and steer us toward a more circular economy. The #LAUNCHNordic Forum also included a Facebook Live production and a poignant retirement farewell from NASA Astronaut Cady Coleman.

2. LAUNCH Food How can we improve health outcomes by enabling people across the world to make healthy food choices? In September, in collaboration with USAID and the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s (DFAT) InnovationXchange, the LAUNCH team asked innovators to answer that question. By December, the LAUNCH Food challenge had reached over 10.5 million people. The challenge ultimately generated 280 innovative applications from 74 countries! Winning innovators will be announced in early 2017.�

Our Global Food Diary invited people from Zimbabwe to the Solomon Islands to submit photos, videos and text illustrating their answer to a simple question: What does a healthy meal look like in your community?

3. LAUNCH Legends

Our global call-out for VR/AR/Gaming ideas to drive healthy food and nutrition outcomes is open through January 16th. The challenge is designed to illuminate how emerging storytelling tools can strengthen public health and social impact efforts in developing countries with a focus on the Pacific. This callout was a direct result of a VR/AR Development Hack we held at DFAT’s innovationXchange in early October.

4. Innovation OnRamp

LAUNCH Food Innovation OnRamp invited a community of food innovators from across the Pacific and Timor-Leste to showcase innovations from the region and support the development of those ideas as submissions into the LAUNCH process. Furthermore, the program exposed innovators to design thinking and emerging technologies in communications.

5. LAUNCH Chemistry The LAUNCH Chemistry Innovation Challenge was a global call for innovators, entrepreneurs, companies, and organizations to enable predictive design through innovative applications of data in chemistry. Together with the American Chemical Society’s Green Chemistry Institute, Nike, Inc. and additional partner organizations, LAUNCH is helping source and scale innovators and companies to make chemistry smarter.

Happy Holidays!

From all of us at LAUNCH Blake Garcia Cara Philbin Carrie Freeman Chad Badiyan Davar Ardalan Elyssa Dole Hanna McCreath

Twitter: @LAUNCHorg Facebook.com/launchorg launch.org

Graphic design by Kate Saker

Heidi Hamlow Jeff Hamaoui Jeremy Kamo Kendra Yoshinaga Matt Scott Monica Price Cohen Natalia Arjomand

Neisan Massarrat Rachel Lawley Roxann Stafford Stuart Gill Todd Khozein Zachary Ostroff