Within the highly competitive and capital-intensive mining sector, crowdsourced technology-driven solutions to some of the industry’s most challenging problems are being unearthed.
From its Melbourne head office, one of the world’s largest gold mining companies, Newcrest Mining, has partnered with Unearthed Solutions to deliver an online platform that utilises the global collective wisdom of ‘the crowd’ to solve particular technical challenges.
The Newcrest Crowd is a crowdsourcing platform that unleashes real-life business problems to innovators around the world, challenging them through the form of an online competition.
These challenges provide access to large operational data sets, financial prizes, and opportunities for ongoing collaboration. Since its inception, The Newcrest Crowd has become a leader in its sophisticated and mature approach to crowdsourcing.
Gavin Wood, Chief Information and Digital Officer, says The Newcrest Crowd uncovers multiple potential solutions from people with the skills, experience and intellect to ‘hack’ multi-million-dollar business problems in mere weeks rather than years.
“We can harness innovative thinkers anywhere in the world, find solutions more cost-efficiently while freeing up our people to do their day job,” Mr Wood said.
“This platform enables us to tap into vast international networks of innovators which are highly skilled, knowledgeable and experienced.”
Innovation, technology and collaborations are transforming the sector. Evidence of this is the Newcrest Hydrosaver competition which received more than 750 potential solutions from 12 countries. It involved predicting tailings underflow density to enable better water recycling.
Newcrest Mining’s partnership with Unearthed demonstrates how Victorian-based mining businesses are connecting with other local businesses and global resources experts to drive new trade and investment to create local jobs.
These collaborations build on Victoria’s successful METS sector, which includes world-class professional services businesses, research institutions and leading-edge IT companies. It also supports the strong manufacturing and engineering sectors operating across the state.
IMARC 2018 provides a unique opportunity to showcase the Victorian METS sector, its research and development potential, and the companies driving it, to a global audience.