Waste Buster — Waste No More

Designing an innovation model leveraging Chicago’s local assembly ecosystem

Faculty Lead:
Carlos Teixeira

Class:
Organizational Models for Innovation

Project Team:
Xuning Guo
Prachi Saxena
Cristina Tarriba

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For seven weeks, our team analyzed Berlin Packaging and deconstructed the local assembly ecosystem in Chicago to identify the innovation opportunity for Berlin. The team is proposing a new organizational model for open innovation that would capitalize on this opportunity through a hypothetical ‘futures department.’ This can plug into and activate the present local assembly ecosystem, and promote the theme of circular economy.

Questions we asked across three levels were:

1. What will the future, moving away from mass production and consumption, look like for Berlin and its stakeholders?
Our proposal: waste prediction platform, co-ownership patenting 2.0

2. What are the business opportunities that exist in this space?
Our proposal: waste innovation incubator, waste buster accelerator, experimental partnerships

3. How can Berlin start to intervene in this space?
Our proposal: living labs, local initiatives

These proposals and their interconnections are visualized in the model.

To learn more about this project click here.