2013_FAMILY VALUE – ICEHUBS NETWORK

How icehubs act as an emerging grass-roots and collaborative innovation network

In the 21st century, sustainable business development is increasingly tied to collaborative process-es of technological innovation and entrepreneurial thinking. Consequently, there is a need for ena-bling processes, methods and spaces that bring together individuals with ideas and potential, who are motivated to become change-makers in their local environment. icehubs seek to enable innova-tion, collaboration and entrepreneurship in terms of actions and behaviours – create, share and benefit.

ice stands for innovation, collaboration, entrepreneurship and is both a community of individu-als and a network of community-driven technology innovation spaces (icehubs) with a strong so-cial and environmental commitment. Hubs promote the invention and development of home-grown technological products and services that constitute affordable and viable technological solu-tions for local challenges. Hubs bring together a diverse community of action-oriented thinkers, doers and leaders in an environment characterised by a collaborative mentality. icehubs are auton-omous, locally managed and financially self-sustainable. These hubs offer facilities and activities to foster community building, networking and collaborative learning. icehubs are politically and religiously neutral.

The core principles of ice

• To identify, enable and share technological and business solutions for local challenges
• To invent products and services that generate sustainable incomes
• To explore new methods for interdisciplinary collaboration
• To strengthen community-shared workspaces
• To encourage entrepreneurship with strong environmental and social commitment
• To foster shift towards a sharing economy.

The ice community

The ice community refers to people exhibiting the following behaviours throughout the world:
• Share your knowledge and resources to achieve common goals.
• Promote the work of your peers.
• Share opportunities for work, income streams and value creation.
• Network people and organisations.

iceaddis in Addis Abeba, Ethiopia was the first prototype for the coming iterations of icehubs in other countries.

Product designers prototyping new adapted mobility solutions for the rough streets of Addis Abeba.

icehubs are physical meeting places, galvanising the young generation of innovators in local communities.

In icecairo, a locally adapted solar water heater system made of locally available components was prototyped and further developed by the Egyptian greentech community under an open source hardware license.

icehubs enable networking and sharing of ideas through community spaces and participatory event formats.

Prototyping is essential to the development of new technologies and services that make sense in the local environment.

icealex in Alexandria, Egypt, was the latest, yet possibly most active addition to the icehubs network.

icehubs enable interdisciplinary collaborative work bringing together traditional craftmanship with state-of-the-art digital technologies.

Access to a FabLab for hands-on rapid prototyping is an important resource for icehubs community members when developing and testing new tech solutions.