Johnson Matthey

As the world faces the challenges of climate change, energy supply issues, and resource scarcity, we actively provide solutions for our customers.

Many of the world’s leading energy, chemicals, and automotive businesses depend on our technology and expertise to catalyze their decarbonization, emissions management, and sustainability efforts.

Partnering with the Wazoku Crowd and its worldwide Solver Community, we’re running complex, novel Challenges to act as a force multiplier to our work – pushing Solvers to use their chemical and materials expertise in exchange for award or collaboration.

Work with us today to accelerate the net zero transition and change the world:

Do you work for JM and want to run a Challenge?

What Challenge will you solve today?

Opportunities for Replacing Base Metals with Platinum Group Metals

Status: Winners Announced

Award: $15,000

View Closed Challenge

Our Focus Areas

We’re making it our business to address four essential transitions to bring about a more sustainable future:

Driving down automotive emissions – 20 million tonnes of pollutants stopped by our catalytic converters every year
Transforming our energy systems – 18% of our energy will be made from hydrogen sources every year by 2050
Decarbonizing chemicals production – leading in the synthesis gas (syngas) value chain for decades
Creating a circular economy – Johnson Matthey is the world’s largest recycler of platinum group metals (platinum, palladium, rhodium, ruthenium, iridium, and osmium)

Johnson Matthey addresses three markets in energy, chemicals, and automotive, through four market-leading businesses. Through inspiring science and continued innovation, we are catalyzing the net zero transition for millions of people every day.

Working with Wazoku Crowd in open innovation, we are leveraging new skills and technologies to drive further sustainability and circularity wins.

Collaboration and Innovation – we stay at the cutting-edge, partaking in ecosystems and roundtables to learn more.

Learn more

Discover our 2050 strategy and beyond – view our business models, markets, and core competencies.

Learn more

“By running this open innovation Challenge, we’ve received two concepts for a process – not just a proposal – in only two months.”

Ronan Bellabarba

Technology Manager, Johnson Matthey

Case Study: Green Hydrogen

In the Sustainable Synthesis of Multi-Ring Compounds Challenge, we offered a $15,000 USD award pool to find an industrially-viable concept to make liquid organic hydrogen carrier (LOHC) materials at scale. This Challenge started as an opportunity to expand Johnson Matthey’s capabilities in the hydrogen economy, and the increased storage density, ease of transport, safety, and cost-effectiveness of solutions has opened up potential programs of work across the business.

In just 8 weeks from end-to-end, Johnson Matthey received 37 solutions from Solvers across 5 continents – particularly in North America, EMEA, and APAC.

“By running this open innovation Challenge, we’ve received two concepts for a process – not just a proposal – in only two months.”
// Ronan Bellabarba – Technology Manager, Johnson Matthey

Two outstanding submissions were rewarded from the $15,000 USD award in this Challenge: the winning Solvers provided critical insight and ideas around aromatic multi-ring compounds being used as LOHCs.

How does the Challenge process work?

Follow these steps to participate in Innocentive challenges and potentially win awards.

Register as a Solver

To register for a Solver account and join Innocentive:

Go to the Innocentive Challenge Center registration page.
Enter an email address, which will be used to login to your account.
Complete the remaining required fields including: (1) Name, (2) Display Name and (3) Location.
Create a password. You will be guided to ensure you create a strong password to protect your account.
Click the Register button.
After you complete the registration form, you will receive an email notification confirming your registration and containing instructions to activate your account.
Click the link in the email. You will be asked to accept the Innocentive Terms of Use to complete the account activation process.

Review the Challenge Agreement

The Challenge Agreement (formerly Challenge Specific Agreement or CSA) is a legal document that outlines a Solver's rights and responsibilities if they elect to submit a solution in response to an Innocentive Challenge. The Challenge Agreement specifies if and how IP will be transferred between Solver and Seeker; it may also specify any special rules, such as exclusionary rules for categories of Solvers, that apply to the Challenge.

You must accept the Challenge Agreement to be able to submit a solution to the Challenge. Be sure to read and understand the Challenge Agreement for each Challenge because you will be subject to the applicable Challenge conditions.

Challenge Agreements provide Solvers with clear details around participation, legal IP transfer (if applicable), and details around Prize and Scouting Challenges.

Submit a Solution

To submit a Solution to an Innocentive Challenge as a member of the Solver community:

Go to the Innocentive Challenge Center.
Select a Challenge.
Click Register Interest & Accept Agreement.
Agree to the Challenge Agreement.
Click Add Solution.
Enter any required information.
Attach your solution files.
Click Publish.

You will receive an email confirmation of receipt of your solution to your registered email address.

Win

Receive cash awards or collaboration agreements if your solution or proposal is accepted by Seeker organizations.

Your solution will be evaluated following the due date for submissions. You will then be notified via email as to whether your solution has been successful. In some challenges, you will also receive feedback on your submission.

Award Potential

We've awarded more than $60 million to thousands of Solvers from around the world.

The average award amount is approximately $20,000, but some challenges come with awards of over $100,000 or collaboration agreements.