The submitted ideas should tackle one of the following sustainability topics. Show how your idea helps Jerusalem solve a local sustainability problem AND how it could be replicated in another city of their choice:

Special interest (but nonexclusive) is in ideas that take advantage of digital tools and technologies and/or collaboratively engage citizens.

We want to ensure that the you are well informed about local sustainability issues to which you want to suggest a solution. Therefore, we encourage you to register to the Jerusalem POWER website, discover relevant contents and inform yourself about the sustainability challenges in the city. The more you know, the better your idea will address the local realities with your proposal and the higher your chances to win the contest.

Register to the Leicester POWER website to learn more about local sustainability issues

To submit an idea, describe your solution to a sustainability problem as a comment in the Idea Space issue. Only registered users can submit ideas. 

Follow these steps to submit your idea:

• Give a catchy title to your idea. 
• Describe very briefly (2-3 sentences) what your idea is about.
• Attach a document with an additional explanation of your idea. The attached document should be no longer than 300 words. You are encouraged to include images or graphics to visualize your idea. You can also provide a video (~2 min) that explains your idea better.
• In the attached document describe the sustainability problem you want to solve and your concrete solution. Show how your idea addresses a local sustainability issue in Jerusalem AND how your idea could be replicated in another city of your choice. 

This is how you submit your idea in the Idea Space of the contest:

The post with your idea submission has a unique sharable link. Share it with your personal network and ask them to support you by commenting and voting (liking) your idea. Don't forget to tell them that only registered users can comment and vote. The more comments and votes (likes) your idea gets, the better your chances to win the contest!

Effective sustainability innovations integrate collective knowledge. This is why we encourage you to improve your idea by including feedback that other members of the community gave to your idea. By posting an updated version of your idea proposal that involves community feedback, you are increasing your idea rank and have better chances to win the contest and find support for the implementation of your idea. Post the improved version of your idea as a comment under your initial idea proposal. See how your idea score is formed in the "Selection process" section. 

We encourage you to further engage with the contents on the platform. This will help you improve your idea. Furthermore, by engaging with the contents here - e.g. reading, articles, following issues, commenting and sharing interesting information you find - you earn points for your knowledge on sustainability topics. The more points you gain, the higher your idea score and the better your chances to win the contest. You can track your progress and the points you have earned in the "My progress" section upon registering.  

Track progress upon registering

Go to the Idea Space issue on this website and check the already submitted idea proposals. 

Comment and vote (by liking) the ideas you like best. The more comments and shares an idea gets, the better its chances to win the contest. Your comments and constructive feedback will help the ideators improve their proposals. Don't forget to register to be able to comment and vote!

Register here to be able to comment and vote on ideas 

We want to ensure that supporters who give feedback and vote on ideas are aware of the Jerusalem local realities and sustainability issues. This is why we encourage you to explore other contents on the platform and inform yourself. By engaging with the contents - e.g. reading, following issues, commenting and sharing interesting information you find here - you earn points for your knowledge. The more points you gain and the better informed you are, the more valuable is your feedback and support for the idea score of the ideas you like. Learn more about the way the idea score is formed in the "Selection process" section. You can track your progress and the points you have earned in the "My progress" section upon registering. 

Track progress upon registering

POWER Idea Contest for Sustainable Communities is a collaborative innovation process and selecting the final winners happens in two separated steps:

The collaborative POWER community will give feedback (by commenting) and vote (by liking) on the submitted ideas. The more votes (i.e. likes) and comments an idea gets, the better its chances are to win the contest. Furthermore, all members of the community are encouraged to engage with the content on the platform by reading, liking, commenting and sharing it. 

• For ideators: Engaging with other contents means that you are better informed about the local realities that your idea addresses, thus your proposal gets a better idea score. You can increase your idea score also by commenting and voting on other impactful ideas that take part in the contest. This way you will help the community develop overall better solutions to sustainability problems. 
• For supporters: Engaging more with contents means that you are better informed about local realities and can evaluate the ideas better. This makes your feedback for the ideas you support more valuable. 

Here is an example of how the idea score works:

Let's assume that your idea submission gets 20 likes from the community. Each like adds 100 points to your idea score. Furthermore, users have different levels (newly registered, beginners, intermediate and advanced) that reflect how much they have been engaging with the contents on the platform. The level achieved determines their multiplying factor for the contest. This means that your idea will get this amount of points for the likes:

10 likes x 100 points/like x 3 (multiplying factor for advanced users) = 3.000 points

10 likes x 100 points/like x 1 (multiplying factor for newly registered users) = 1.000 points

In addition, each comment gets you 300 points. Let's assume that your idea got 10 comments from intermediate users. Then your idea will get following points for the comments:

10 comments x 300 points/comment x 2 (multiplying factor for intermediate users) = 6.000 points 

This means that the overall amount of points you get from the community feedback is:

3.000 + 1.000 + 6.000 = 10.000 points from community feedback

The points you received from the community feedback are finally multiplied by your own multiplying factor. Let's assume that you are an advanced user. In this case your multiplying factor is 3, which means that your idea score is

Idea score = 10.000 points x 3 = 30.000 points overall

As you can see, comments weigh more than likes, the feedback from better informed users receives a higher number of points, and if the ideators themselves engage more with the platform, their personal multiplying factor is higher. This means that as an ideator you are interested in 1) being better informed and achieving a higher personal multiplying factor and 2) having supporters that are better informed and with higher personal multiplying factors. For supporters this means that the more you learn about sustainability issues, the more valuable are your comments and likes for the ideas you support. 

You can track your progress and see what level and what multiplying score you have achieved in the "My progress" page upon registering. 

The collaborative feedback and voting starts on 24 September 2018 and ends on 30 November  2018. In the end, the top 20 ideas that got most comments and votes will get to the next stage of the contest. 

After the top 20 idea submissions are selected in the collaborative feedback and voting process, their authors will be requested to create a short video or audio record to explain their idea and send it to the POWER jury. The POWER jury consists of international sustainability experts, members of local municipalities, members of academia, and innovation specialists. The jury will evaluate the videos and audios based on predefined criteria (which will be communicated with the ideators beforehand) and will select the top 10 contest winners. 

The sending of the videos/audios and the final selection of the POWER jury will happen in the period from 1 December 2018 to 28 February 2019. 

Ten best-voted ideators will receive the POWER Sustainability Innovation Award and will be offered support to implement their ideas. The support consists of:

	An invitation to the POWER conference to present their ideas to an international high-profile audience of innovation and sustainability experts. Travel costs will be covered.
	Networking and matching session with organizations and individuals interested in helping the ideators - financially, materially or with mentoring - to implement their ideas.
	Workshop on Innovation Design & Management  from experts in the field to help you learn how to best proceed in making your idea a reality.
	Communication & dissemination of their idea through the POWER network and communication channels.

Individuals and organizations (public and private) from EU member states and Israel can submit their ideas to the contest. Register now to participate in the contest!