Solving Social Enterprise Challenges with Public Ideas!

The Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO Commissioner Kim Wan-Gi) and the Beautiful Store Foundation (Chairman Park Jin-Won) jointly hosted the awards ceremony for the ‘2024 Good Ideas Competition’ on July 2 at 4 PM at the Korea Intellectual Property Center in Gangnam Seoul.

Starting this year the competition added a new category Prototype Creation and Naming in addition to the existing Social Problem Solving category of the Beautiful Store. A total of 424 ideas were submitted with 31 in the Social Problem Solving category and 393 in the Prototype Creation and Naming category. Out of these 10 ideas were honored with awards.

Social Enterprises: Saemmuljari Dasan Myungga 119 Reo Mentory Social Cooperative
The Grand Prize (KIPO Commissioner’s Award) in the Social Problem Solving category was awarded to Lim Hyun-Bin for his idea of a Sharing Market Using Padlet.

Padlet: A collaborative platform where multiple users can create and share content.
The Excellence Award (President of Korea Invention Promotion Association Award) went to Team Harmony for their idea ZEP-Based Convergence Sharing Education for 4th and 5th Graders.

ZEP: A platform providing virtual spaces (metaverse) for meetings and other activities.
The Encouragement Award (President of Korea Invention Promotion Association Award) was given to four teams: Kang Hye-In Team Dream of Wind Lee Sung-In and Lim Hyun-Bin.

In the Prototype Creation and Naming category the Excellence Award (Chairman of Beautiful Store Award) went to Kim Jun-Young for his idea of a Scale Usable by Individuals with Developmental Disabilities Who Have Difficulty Reading Numbers for Saemmuljari.

The Encouragement Award (Chairman of Beautiful Store Award) was given to three teams: Cho Young-Je Team Capybara and Kang Min-Seok.

A total of 10 ideas were selected as winners through on-site evaluations by a judging panel consisting of employees from the participating companies and experts in relevant fields. These selected ideas will be utilized in the actual business operations of the companies that presented the challenges.

Since 2022 KIPO has been running the ‘Good Ideas Competition’ to solve the challenges of the Beautiful Store by leveraging the creative ideas of the public.

Beautiful Store has actively implemented ideas from past competitions in its operations. In 2022 the idea for using unsold clothing led to the creation of popup stores and in 2023 the idea for promoting a culture of goods donation resulted in organizing bazaars and donation booths on university campuses.

Kim Si-Hyung Deputy Commissioner of KIPO stated “We hope that the creative ideas discovered in this competition will help solve the challenges faced by social enterprises. KIPO will continue to strive to create a foundation for solving various social problems through public ideas.”

Website: : http://www.wip-news.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=24143