NSN's Silicon Valley contest seeks big data, telco cloud innovations

Nokia (NYSE:NOK) Solutions and Networks (NSN) wants to spark "disruptive advancements for mobile networks" via a contest in Silicon Valley that is open to individuals and companies that think they have an innovative idea for "colossal" data analytics and telco cloud, which NSN describes as "two transformations enabling the mobile Internet of the future."

The winner of NSN's Silicon Valley Open Innovation Challenge will receive an all-expenses-paid trip to collaborate with the company at its headquarters in Europe. Submissions may also become candidates for grooming and venture funding via Nokia Growth Partners, Nokia's VC arm.

Applications will be reviewed by a multi-disciplinary panel of experts. The contest will run through May 10, 2014, "after which there will be multiple rounds of engagement and coaching with a cross-functional jury," wrote NSN spokeswoman Kanika Atri in a blog entry.

Winners will be announced at an event scheduled for July 2. Nokia promises 125 industry experts will be on hand for that event, as well as representatives from Nokia Growth Partners, other VCs, and NSN management and decision makers. 

"The whole purpose of open, collaborative outside-in innovation is not just to speed up how our industry evolves, or disrupts itself in the future but also to innovate smartly. Smart innovation means not reinventing the wheel, but taking what's been done before and applying it meaningfully to new domains," said Atri.

In other news, NSN also announced a substantial donation, which will be made over two years, to help the OpenSSL Project battle future vulnerabilities similar to the Heartbleed bug. NSN has become the project's first platinum sponsor and will also provide the effort with support from its new Mobile Broadband Security Center in Berlin, which will become fully operational in the second half of 2014.

For more:
- see this NSN release, blog entry and release

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Article updated April 28, 2014, to add information provided by NSN.