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General Motors is preparing today’s students and tomorrow’s workforce with the tools needed to address the world’s most pressing problems. We recognize this commitment as a vital step in achieving our vision of Zero Crashes, Zero Emissions, and Zero Congestion.
Since 2018, GM and Solve — an initiative of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — are working together to help connect and engage with innovators, and bring their cutting-edge solutions to life in order to help solve the world’s challenges. Together, we’re collaborating with these global changemakers to generate solutions supporting a strong future workforce, learning opportunities for all, and sustainable communities through new opportunities, technology, and education.
With more than 10,000 viewers from across the world, and a fireside chat including our own Chair and CEO, Mary Barra, MIT Solve creates an entrepreneurial ecosystem where local change agents can collaborate to help develop a safer, smarter, more mobile world for global citizens.
“The optimism, the partnership, the open innovation, the focus on human solutions and the desire to use technology to solve the world’s most pressing problems are all values that GM shares with MIT Solve.”
- Ken Kelzer, vice president of global vehicle components at General Motors.
A new decade of changemakers
Each year, Solve issues four Challenges across its four pillars—Economic Prosperity, Health, Learning, and Sustainability—to find the most promising Solver teams who will drive transformational change. In 2020, an unprecedented fifth challenge was added to solve for Health Security and Pandemics in light of the coronavirus pandemic.
To support, our very own Chair and CEO, Mary Barra, participated in a virtual interview with MIT President L. Rafael Reif to discuss GM’s response to the pandemic through the development of ventilators and personal protective equipment, as well as share how companies can build resilience to help in the face of future crises.
You can watch the full interview below.
Winning solutions
In 2019, the GM prize on Community-Driven Innovation called for solutions that foster prosperity and social mobility for underrepresented community members. Our sponsored prizes also focused on minimizing waste and making the most of resources as our beliefs for a more sustainable future align with the core meaning of a circular economy – minimizing waste and making the most of resources.
Altogether, we awarded $25,000 to each of the Community-Driven Innovation and Circular Economy challenge finalists below:
- POKET – An app that boosts small retailers in emerging economies by incentivizing regular users to map their communities.
- WheeLog! – Enables wheelchair users, people with reduced mobility, and others to access and share accessibility information through an interactive map that lets users see the accessibility of public spaces and the routes they can take.
- AIR-INK – Turns carbon emissions PM2.5 into industrial grade inks and pigments.
- BioCellection – New technology to chemically break down dirty plastic bags and re-synthesize materials for advanced manufacturing.
Winning solutions
In 2018, our first year as an MIT Solve sponsor, GM invested in four Solver teams with solutions supporting a strong future workforce through new opportunities, technology and education for all, with a total of $100,000 in grant funding.
The selected 2018 prize winners were:
- Virtual Grasp – Aims to enable the next generation of learning with hands-on virtual reality training.
- Livox – Enables millions of nonverbal, disabled people to communicate and learn.
- Refactored.ai – Guides organizations through change and transformation by developing today’s workforce to become data thinkers for success in tomorrow’s workplace.
- Talking Points – Supports parent-teacher partnerships and engagement to drive student success through technology in a multilingual family engagement and communication platform.
Investing in the future to move humanity forward.
We are proud to invest in the future of workforce and will continue to support initiatives that create solutions and opportunities that keep humanity moving forward.
For more information about other investments and partnerships General Motors has made to move humanity, STEM education, Safety, Community Development, and Detroit forward, please visit: https://www.gm.com/commitments/communities