Daejeon City - Korean Intellectual Property Office, 'Idea Contest' to Solve Local Community Issues

Provided by Daejeon City

[Asia Economy (Daejeon) Reporter Jeong Il-woong] Daejeon City and the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) are calling for citizen ideas to solve social and urban problems within the region.

The city announced on the 6th that it will jointly hold an "Idea Contest" with KIPO based on this plan.

The contest will first run from the 6th of this month until January 28 of next year, during which 40 major social issues across 10 key areas including health, environment, culture and leisure, public safety, disaster and calamity, and energy will be identified, and participating companies and organizations will be recruited. Following this, in February next year, the contest topics will be selected and refined, with the event scheduled to take place from March to May.

Companies and organizations wishing to participate in the contest should submit proposals related to major social issues. The call for proposals is divided into two types: idea sharing and idea transaction, and participating institutions must choose one of these types to propose their topics.

The idea sharing type involves participating institutions receiving ideas from citizens to solve problems, and in this case, all or a majority (at least two-thirds) of the profits gained from the ideas must be donated to society.

The idea transaction type involves participating institutions purchasing ideas proposed by citizens to solve the problems.

All companies and organizations located in Daejeon are eligible to participate in the call for proposals. However, for the idea sharing type, only social enterprises, non-profit organizations (NPOs), or institutions invested in, funded, or supported by the city and their affiliated organizations are eligible.

The city and KIPO plan to select the final topics by evaluating the necessity of solving the submitted problems, the suitability as contest topics (including relevance to local social issues), and the feasibility of idea generation and utilization.

In particular, the city has designated environment (especially carbon neutrality-related topics) and public safety as priority areas and plans to encourage many institutions and organizations to participate in these fields.

Further details regarding the discovery of local social issues (topics) and recruitment of participating institutions can be found in the recruitment announcements posted on the websites of Daejeon City or KIPO.

Ji Yong-hwan, Director of the Citizen Community Bureau of Daejeon City, said, "The city will focus on establishing a structure where citizens directly participate in local community innovation activities and solve social problems to create a sustainable and resilient city. We hope many companies and organizations participate in the contest to gather citizen ideas and have opportunities to solve problems."