In 2011, the Department of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) launched the SunShot initiative, a national collaborative effort to make solar energy cost-competitive with other forms of electricity by the end of the decade. The program matches great ideas that advance the solar market with great teams that can execute on a business solution. Learn how EERE: - designed a process to rigorously evaluate the best ideas, becoming the fastest funding mechanism across the DOE - became wildly successful at engaging and impacting the solar community as well as nontraditional stakeholders - created a broad impact across multiple government agencies as a shining example of how prize authority can be used in a creative way to form early stage startups and assist new entrants into a particular industry

1.
DEPARTMENTOFENERGY
CATALYST
BEST MODERATION STRATEGY
2014 IDEASCALE INNOVATION AWARDS

2. The Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) is at the
center of creating the clean energy economy today. In order to meet their
mission, EERE leads the U.S. Department of Energy's efforts to develop and
deliver market-driven solutions for energy-saving homes, buildings, and
manufacturing; sustainable transportation; and renewable electricity
generation. One of its most recent projects is the SunShot initiative, which is
a national collaborative effort to make solar energy cost-competitive with
other forms of electricity by the end of the decade.
In order to do that, EERE created the SunShot Catalyst – an innovation
community that turns crowdsourced solar ideas into a reality. Essentially, the
program matches great ideas that advance the solar market with great teams
that can execute on a business solution.
With that in mind, the SunShot Catalyst IdeaScale community was built to
source both the biggest problems and the most effective solutions. The team
launched two campaigns and if a solution was selected for review in the
second phase, SunShot
Catalyst would finish by
offering up t $25K to
developers who could
develop a prototype that
would enable execution of
a particular business
solution. With that end
goal in mind, EERE
designed a process, which
rigorously evaluated and
then funded the best ideas
in two phases.
2INNOVATION AWARDS 2014 -­‐ CATALYST
Department of Energy, SunShot Ini5a5ve
Crea5ng the Fastest Funding Solu5on in the Department of Energy
Catalyst Homepage

3.
Phase 1:
• Launched the ideation campaign during which potential ideas were
collected.
• The moderation review panel approved ideas according to rules and
criteria published in the official rules shared on the platform.
• Those ideas (called problem statements) were displayed publicly.
• After 30-days, the community was allowed to vote and comment for 60
days without moderator approval for publishing on the most important
problem statements.
• Some of the most promising ideas were highlighted with a thumbs-up icon
from the custom attachment field by the moderation team.
Phase 2:
• During this stage, two campaigns ran concurrently that were seeking both
new ideas and business innovation. The business innovation campaign
used custom fields including the embedded video functionality. At the
same time, the ideation campaign was re-opened. In the ideation
campaign, the team was seeking problem statements that articulated
some of the toughest solar market problems related to software, data,
algorithms, and automation. In the business innovation campaign, teams
submitted a title, description, online resume or CV, and a video pitch that
both solved and linked to a specific problem statement from the ideation
campaign.
• All submissions required moderator approval before becoming active and
visible to the public.
• After submissions were
vetted with voting and the
thumbs up from the previous
phase, the administrative team
used the assessment tool for
reviewers evaluate video
pitches.
• The review assessments
guided to the decision to fund
twenty different teams who
proposed solutions.
3INNOVATION AWARDS 2014 -­‐ CATALYST
Catalyst as featured in TechCrunch

4.
The SunShot Catalyst program has become wildly successful at engaging and
impacting the solar community as well as nontraditional stakeholders. This
was proven in numerous ways.
•The Department of Energy (DOE), SunShot Initiative combined with the
IdeaScale brand recognition has resulted in articles in TechCrunch,
Gigaom, and CleanTechnica.
•The team has reached over five million people via Twitter which has
resulted in approximately 11% or the SunShot Catalyst active members.
•To date, the program has over 5,340 participating members in their
community with a verified email address and over 23,000 invited
members.
•Catalyst has had a broad impact across multiple government agencies
being a shining example of how prize authority can be used in a creative
way to form early stage startups and assist new entrants into a particular
industry. This has resulted in announcements from the Secretary of
Energy in addition to mentions by the White House talking points, blog
posts, and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
social media.
•With the IdeaScale platform, they increased their level of engagement and
impact. The members of the Catalyst community have been responsible
for submitting 137 problem statements, 1353 votes, 179 comments,
and 38 video pitch business solutions.
“We would like to highlight how quickly these results have been
achieved relative to comparable government programs. With a
timeline of less than six weeks, Catalyst is currently the fastest
funding mechanism across the DOE. The program was conceived,
approved, and launched in less than six months. By using the
IdeaScale platform, we have been able to achieve this velocity
without increasing management cost. Costs for managing the
community and campaigns have been reduced by ~90%.”
Michael Contreras, Managing Director, Department of Energy, SunShot Catalyst
Utilizing this solution has attracted new talent and stakeholders to solar and it
is helping connect entrepreneurs to their product-market in a cost-efficient
fashion. It also allows the SunShot program to support innovative solar
solutions early and often in their development cycle.
44INNOVATION AWARDS 2014 -­‐ CATALYST

5. FOR MORE INFORMATION
sales@ideascale.com
Global / Americas
+1 800-­‐549-­‐9198
New Zealand
+64-­‐080-­‐099-­‐5088
Australia
+61-­‐02-­‐9037-­‐8414
United Kingdom
+44-­‐0-­‐808-­‐189-­‐1476
What Did We Learn from the Department of
Energy?
INNOVATION AWARDS 2014 -­‐ CATALYST 5
• During the voting stage, make sure that the active ideas tab is
defaulted into a randomized order so as to minimize selection bias
• Give users step-by-step screenshots of the process they are
participating in
• Help lines are a valuable resource to end users
• A custom site layout helpfully organizes ideas from different or
concurrent campaigns
• Embed invitations onto the landing page to promote in-person
innovation opportunities
• Twitter is a valuable source for crowdsourced participation in an
innovation community.