Winners: Nokia's Silicon Valley Open Innovation Challenge

Nokia Networks recently announced the winners of its Silicon Valley Open Innovation Challenge, a contest designed to connect the infrastructure giant with new ideas and talent. David Letterman (yes), the company’s head of ecosystem development, is based in Silicon Valley and the contest was also based there this year. But many participants, including the winners, came from outside the Valley.
“We weren’t going to constrain that the solutions had to come from any geography or from any type of company, any size of company,” said Letterman. “We didn’t really know what to expect. Nokia is going through a lot of change. We’re not strangers to being on both sides of the disruption equation.”
The contest had two focus areas this year: virtualization of the telco network and using predictive big data analytics to make sense of network data. The Open Innovation Challenge received 90 applications, half from Silicon Valley and half from other parts of the world. Only half the applicants were startups.
The two grand prize winners won a trip to Nokia’s headquarters to meet with company leadership. Each of the seven finalists was assigned a Nokia “innovation champion” to help them navigate the company and leverage its resources.
The winners were Midokura and ParStream. Midokura’s MidoNet provides a software-based virtual networking layer within an existing physical network infrastructure. ParStream says its algorithms parse huge volumes of data faster than the speed of light. The winners joined RCR Wireless News and Nokia’s David Letterman to discuss the Open Innovation Challenge and their winning solutions: