Happy 2017 from SecondMuse!

2016 was a big year for SecondMuse.

Together with our committed partners, collaborators and innovators we’re tackling some of the biggest challenges of our time including food security, climate resilience, re-engineering aquaculture, sustainable palm oil production as well as disrupting how we reuse, recover and recycle waste. Our work addressing women and girls in STEM, incubating advanced manufacturing and building capacity for innovators has taken us from the five boroughs of New York City to some 20 countries around the world from Timor-Leste in Southeast Asia to Tanzania and Mexico. And we’ve spent more than 260 hours this year volunteering our time during work weeks. This is all core to our belief that the key to human prosperity is a combination of diverse thinking and coordinated action to solve tough challenges. Through the power of social storytelling in 2016, we’ve engaged with over 60 million people. Leading into 2017, we invite you to reflect with us on some of our SecondMusings of the past year.

Happy Holidays and Peace to All!

Top Ten SecondMusings from 2016

#1

#SpaceApps: Partner: NASA The largest global hackathon, an absolutely mammoth collaboration between 500+ people rocketed this year’s International Space Apps Challenge.

Within 48 hours, more than 15,000 global citizens (including technologists, scientists, designers, artists and entrepreneurs) in 161 cities - across 60+ countries - leveraged open data to make a dent in some of our most pressing challenges, within and beyond our atmosphere. Our social campaigns reached some 24 million people around the #SpaceApps hashtag. We’re already preparing for Space Apps 2017, taking place April 29 to 30.

Top Ten SecondMusings from 2016

#2

LAUNCH: Cycle Partners: USAID, Nike, Inc., The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s InnovationXchange, IKEA Group, Novozymes, Kvadrat, The Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (3GF), The Danish EPA, Region Skåne, and American Chemical Society. LAUNCH believes that innovation can be used as a lever to galvanize systemic change in the things we create and the things we consume. In 2016, we tested that belief through three innovation challenges: LAUNCH Food, LAUNCH Chemistry and LAUNCH Closing the Loop. Throughout the fall, these three challenges reached over 12.5 million people, with 400- plus innovative applications from more than 75 countries! While LAUNCH Food and LAUNCH Chemistry Innovators will be announced in early 2017, six Closing the Loop Innovators have already been announced and incorporated into the network.

2016 also saw the LAUNCH team explore new territory with an Innovation OnRamp in Timor-Leste, where we showcased innovations from the Pacific region, supported the development of those ideas as submissions into the LAUNCH process, and grew our network of committed individuals who want to improve health outcomes through better food.

Learnings from the Innovation OnRamp helped inform our first LAUNCH Legends challenge, a global call-out for VR/AR/Gaming ideas to drive healthy food and nutrition outcomes. DFAT’s InnovationXchange program is offering up to AUD $200,000 to help bring winning LAUNCH Legends proposals to fruition. The challenge is open through January 16, 2017.

Top Ten SecondMusings from 2016

#3

#FutureworksNYC: Partners: New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) and Futureworks NYC. In 2016, we launched the third year of the Next Top Makers program, building out a network of more than 50 mentors while incorporating six innovative Fellow companies into the fold. Next Top Makers is becoming part of a larger investment

by NYCEDC under the umbrella of Futureworks. SecondMuse will continue to stay involved.

Heading into 2017, the US is increasingly fascinated by and interested in redeveloping our national manufacturing economy. Manufacturing is a core part of America’s identity and we’re seeing the first stages of manufacturing regrowth. Urban manufacturing is leading the charge as cities overhaul their infrastructure, entrepreneurs build market-tested smart technologies and investors see the promise, and efficiency of, building locally. In New York City, the urban manufacturing economy is growing and programs such as Next Top Makers and Futureworks are about creating an inclusive growth trajectory for urban manufacturing.

Top Ten SecondMusings from 2016

#4

#HackForChange: Partners: Code for America and US Small Business Administration. Held every June, the National Day of Civic Hacking brings together software developers, entrepreneurs and regular citizens to leverage their collective knowledge against publiclyreleased data, code and technologies to develop ways to make the public sector work better. This year’s event reached more than 24 million changemakers online, through inspiring conversations with everyone from participating hackers, to the Mayor of Palo Alto, CA. It was showcased prominently at this year’s White House Open Data Innovation Summit.

Top Ten SecondMusings from 2016

#5 #BigDataInnovate: Partner: World Bank Group. The World Bank Big Data Innovation Challenge is a global call to identify big data solutions connected to climate change issues relating to food security, nutrition, forestry and watersheds. The innovation challenge obtained 189 relevant big data submissions developed by innovators and organizations from over 45 countries. The solutions ranged from advanced data analytics on crop yield data to early warning systems, geospatial data visualizations, machine learning solutions on forestry inventories, new hydrometeorological data applications and artiďŹ cial intelligence solutions. The top 10 solutions will be recognized publicly by the World Bank Group in early 2017.

Top Ten SecondMusings from 2016

#6

#Aquacelerator: Partner: Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) InnovationXchange. Aquacelerator is an effort to revolutionize the aquaculture industry, develop local economies across the Indian Ocean region and improve our relationship with oceans, fishing and aquatic life, by connecting inspiring innovators with the networks capable of turning their ideas into reality.

Aquacelerator advances the global adoption and scale of the ten most inspiring ideas surfaced during the Blue Economy Challenge. Through April of 2017, Aquacelerator network members and innovators will engage in an intensive and collaborative learning process to accelerate these innovations, and to fuel a more sustainable future for our oceans. Follow the Aquacelerator network journey with #Aquacelerator on Twitter.

Top Ten SecondMusings from 2016

#7

#SAWITChallenge: Partners: USAID, Serikat Petani Kelapa Sawit, and Indonesia Business Council for Sustainable Development. The SAWIT Challenge launched an open competition that sought to identify and foster breakthrough solutions to help Indonesia’s independent smallholder farmers increase productivity while meeting sustainability standards. We received 72 applications from 20 countries. From the submissions, nine innovator teams were selected to present at the Innovation Marketplace where we convened 52 Council Members in attendance. 25 out of 26 surveyed Council Members stated that they felt the “innovations were relevant to increase sustainable palm oil production by independent smallholder farmers” and 100% of the Innovator teams indicated their participation in the program yielded fruitful outcomes.

Top Ten SecondMusings from 2016

#8 #NASADatanauts: Partner: NASA. Datanauts is a year-round engagement for members from around the world to practice data science skills and learn about how to access and use NASA’s open data. Datanatus was born out of NASA’s women in data initiative. Now, in it’s second year, Datanauts is open to anyone interested in technology, data science, earth and space. This year’s cohort of 49 Datanauts come from a wide range of life stages, career choices, and levels of technical expertise: designers, developers, data scientists, students, storytellers, career transitioners, nonprofit managers, entrepreneurs, and parents. Together, the cohort has taken part in 3 Starry Night Community Events, bringing together guests from more than 10 countries. The initiative was also featured as part of Space Apps 2016 and the White House United State of Women.

Top Ten SecondMusings from 2016

#9 Core77 Award: On June 1, our Internet Freedom NeedďŹ nding Framework, which uses human-centered design to make an impact on a local level, was honored by the Core77 Design Awards. The NeedďŹ nding Framework was named a runner-up in the Strategy and Research Category of the awards and joins a diverse assortment of companies, including Amazon, Oculus and SAP, as well as past clients Google and Microsoft, in receiving Core77 recognition this year. SecondMuse team members worked on the project in India, Tunisia, Uganda and with visiting Vietnamese journalists, alongside Internet Freedom partner the Open Technology Lab.

Top Ten SecondMusings from 2016

#10

Todd Khozein at BIF 2016: SecondMuse Managing Partner Todd Khozein gave a powerful speech before a live audience at the Business Innovation Factory’s 2016 gathering this past September. Todd stressed the importance of network-centered innovation and diversity of thought: “The problem with the solitary voice is that even genius has blinders. We all have deep-seated biases that we don’t know about. These biases form our narratives subconsciously before we even have a chance to challenge them.”

Happy Holidays from all of us at SecondMuse!

Blake Garcia Cara Philbin Carrie Freeman Chad Badiyan Davar Ardalan David Ball

Twitter: @SecondMuse facebook.com/secondmuse secondmuse.com Graphic design by Kate Saker

Elyssa Dole Hanna McCreath Heidi Hamlow Je Hamaoui Jeremy Kamo Joel Carnes

Katey Metzroth Kendra Yoshinaga Lena Delchad Matt Scott Monica Price Cohen Natalia Arjomand

Neisan Massarrat Rachel Lawley Roxann Staord Stuart Gill Todd Khozein Will Scott-Kemmis