译文/Translated：
我们采访了TAIKAI的创办人和CEO Mário Alves，他的TAIKAI平台是一个开放的创新平台，其目标是改变工作、合作和问题解决的未来。
能和我们说说TAIKAI吗？
现在的组织比过去任何时候面对的挑战都多。但是，有些解决方法可能缺少足够的远见，有时候，这些挑战甚至就这被放掉了。TAIKAI想把世界各地的人才集合到一起，在一个开放、合作的环境中共同解决挑战，最终改变现在的情况。
TAIKAI或“大会”（“竞合”的日语写法）指把竞争的多方团结起来，让他们合作实现对双方都有好处的解决方案。企业可以开放其创新过程，提高自己开发解决方案的速度和质量。
我们帮助企业在我们的网络平台上推出创新的挑战和黑客马拉松。它能加速整个进程，从创造挑战，到应用和入门，直到最后投票选出胜利者并给予奖励。这都可以在网上用完全透明的方式实现。
开放的线上挑战可以产生和传统方法完全不同的结果。它们可以提高解决方案的质量和多样性，同时，对于组织来说，可持续性更强、成本更高效。
开放的竞争也可以更包容。除了你自己的社区，世界上任何一个人，只要有网络，就可以带着他的想法加入并做出贡献。
是什么让你想创建TAIKAI的？
领英的一个全球调研显示，37%的受访者认为他们现在的工作并没有完全利用其技能或给他们足够的挑战。所以说，很多人才利用不彻底，对我们来说，这就是一个巨大的浪费。2018年，我们和我们的投资者意识到，我们有必要解决这个问题。
我们创造了TAIKAI应对该问题。它给我们提供了一个方法，为这些被浪费的人才创建更好的未来，对于企业来说，它们遇到问题，寻找不同的解决方法的时候，这也是一个好事。
你为什么决定使用区块链技术，尤其是EOSIO呢？
四年前，当我第一次接触到区块链技术的概念时，我开始挖掘这个奇妙的领域，也爱上了这个领域。
我开始学习以后，我很快就开始向朋友、家人解释这个概念。不久以后，我就开始在企业和大学演讲。这个兴趣日益增强，后来，我就创办了Blockchain Center Portugal，这是葡萄牙最大的区块链技术社区之一。
我和Helder一起创办了TAIKAI，那时候，我们就知道代币化的意义，它可以未黑客马拉松和其它创新的挑战提供一个透明和可审计的选择过程。我们还认为，区块链可以给平台带来一个崭新的游戏化层，所以，我们在迭代早期就开始做好了规划。
现在市场上没有哪个创新平台有集成以上两个概念的任意一个，我们就知道，它可以成为游戏改变者。但是选择区块链可能是很困难的：现在的区块链和平台也在不断增长，从中做出筛选不是一个容易的事。
我们想避免过分面面俱到，只想客观地关注我们构建一个成功的app所需要的。我们希望能找到一个区块链平台，它给我们提供可规模化、好上手、成本有效和可靠的解决方案，而我们最后就选定了EOSIO。
在我们看来，一个很重要的事情是一般用户不会注意到使用我们平台和使用非区块链平台有什么差别。如果我们用任何其它的区块链，这样的无缝体验都是做不到的。
TAIKAI现在到了哪个阶段呢？
我们启动到现在已经一年了，我们的成果相当棒
- 我们主办了12个组织的17场创新的挑战
- 参与者超过4000
- 我们大概建了500个开源项目
在我们成功地和葡萄牙最大的几个公司和大学合作以后，我们现在希望能扩展。我们积极在世界各地寻找新客户、社区和合作伙伴，这样我们就能向全世界展示我们的平台。此外，我们还启动了我们自己的公益项目。
您面对过哪些困难，又是怎么克服的呢？
尽管我们主要帮其它公司解决问题，但是我们也要解决我们自己的一些问题——其中肯定最困难的就是寻找真正的人才！最难的就是我们要说服第一个人，之后就顺利多了。
很幸运的是，我说服的第一个人是Helder，他是我的联合创始人。他是一台代码机器，他有了不起的视野，对区块链技术也有巨大的热情。我们合作建立了一个了不起的团队，这是真正起作用的事。
说服公司和大型机构外化它们的创新过程、使用区块链这样的技术也很难，并且现在也依然很困难。我们没有什么万能的解决问题，到那时我们现在知道坚持并展示结果是一个很好的方法，向其它公司展示这事能成。
您的扩展计划怎么样呢？
从第一天开始，扩展就印在我们的DNA中。在科技和交流方面，我们构建的产品都随时准备要扩展。现在我们都在经历的这场危机把世界捆绑在一起，也展示了，物理上的边境不过是我们人类自己想出来的概念而已。
作为一个永远的乐观主义者，我真的相信，扩张的过程总是关于怎么把价值多带给一个人、一个公司。这样自然而然的结果就是指数性上升。我们和世界各地很多公司和合作伙伴，以及投资人都聊过。他们对我们的产品和我们的愿景都很兴奋。我们也计划很快要开展我们的第一个全球挑战。
您参与了EOSIO社区哪些项目，EOSIO社区怎么看TAIKAI的呢？
EOSIO社区是我们成功的一个主要元素，不管是直接还是间接的。我们刚开始做TAIKAI，Block.one就在指导我们如何利用EOSIO技术搭建稳定的产品。
我们还参加了SVK Crypto和它特别棒的CEO Shane Kehoe举办的一次活动。我们看到了黑客马拉松怎么给社区带来惊人的解决方案，我们也是Everything EOS的忠实听众。
社区中我们还参与了其它一些非常好的项目，我们希望能尽快和其中一些项目启动联合挑战。这都证明，我们选到了最适合的合伙社区。
能聊聊你的团队，说说他们特别在哪里吗？
我靠搞经济为生，但我心中却独爱科技。我原来在普华永道做投资银行家。我自己却热衷于创新和区块链，2018年，我成立了葡萄牙区块链社区Blockchain Center Portugal。
我带着团队做销售、市场、产品开发，我在部门间轮转，就像我最喜欢的游戏形象：超级马里奥！
我说我们团队了不起，我可是认真的。我的CTO和联合创始人Helder非常务实，技术上他也是个天才。他建立了我们现在在用的整个后台和区块链系统，同时还帮我制定了整个产品的思路，同时还是我们办公室的DJ。
Henrique是我们的UX/UI（用户体验/用户界面）的负责人，他要负责构建漂亮的交互界面。他是黑客马拉松冠军赛的常驻用户。上次他自己算了下，一共有10个项目获奖！
Vanessa是TAIKAI的声音，她负责市场和产品管理，同时还要保证团队士气高昂。
Diogo和我们的客户在谈判桌上沟通的时候，冷静中又带着平平移进入。他之前主要负责发展和加速项目。他积极想要塑造未来工作的样子。
你还和什么项目有合作？
我们参加了微软的“Microsoft for Startups”，同时我们还是葡萄牙大学的一个成员。我们是葡萄牙初创公司中最大的社区的一员，自然，我们的投资者Bright Pixel非常关注区块链项目。
最近我们启动了一个新项目：Fight COVID-19 Open Challenge。这个项目旨在帮助企业和个人合作并产生新颖的解决方案，帮助我们对抗新冠病毒。我们希望，我们这个有着120个公司和4500个志愿者的社区能够在这次全球抗疫中做出贡献。
您怎么看待TAIKAI的未来？
我们的愿景是未来，有专业技术的个人能够从不同国家寻找到基于挑战的机会。
我们给创新者提供了正确的空间和环境，让他们能够应对公司或社区提出的挑战、为它们提供解决方案、并从中获益。这样也让他们在向社区展示自己的创意或解决方案的时候赢得名声。
您还希望读者了解什么？
如果你觉得我们的愿景靠谱，你也积极想参加黑客马拉松和竞赛，今天就加入我们。我们会试着保证你不会后悔。
如果你代表公司或者其他组织，也不要害怕公开你的创新过程。我真诚地相信，让大家知道你的挑战，你能得到的肯定比内部消化这些挑战多。
为什么黑客马拉松和竞赛能够产生这么多创新的问题解决方案？
黑客马拉松和竞争把人们从舒适区拉出来。这就是奇迹发生的地方。人们相互协作，虽然是在不同的背景下，但他们都能够产生想法和项目，而这些在一般的企业中却难以实现。
现在经常合作的团队间就经常发生这样的事情，所以想象下，如果是来自不同地区和文化的人呢？如果团队中有日本人、法国人和加拿大人，他们要协作构建解决方案呢？这听上去像是一个古老的笑话，但这可能会成为未来的现实，我们也希望我们能够参与其中，促其发展。
您能用一句话说说TAIKAI，让读者记住你们吗？
我们希望大家能把我们当成一个开放创新的Github，未来，人们可以今天和NASA合作明天和Google合作。
. . .
Building on EOSIO?建立在EOSIO
我们的 #建立在EOSIO 系列展示了利用EOSIO科技的一些卓越的项目，它们都能为我们更加安全和联系的世界添砖加瓦。如果您想给我们下一个阶段的项目提建议，请给我们的开发者关系小组发送邮件spotlight@block.one
– Block.one 开发者关系小组
. . .
TAIKAI获得了EOS VC赞助。获得更多关于Block.one的VC赞助名单，请访问EOS VC网站：vc.eos.io
关于 EOS VC
Block.one的EOS VC部门给开发者和创业者提供成立利用EOSIO的企业所需要的资金，其方式是依靠风投伙伴资金。该部门投资于大量各类利用EOSIO软件的区块链公司，从而实现EOSIO生态的可持续使用。EOS VC项目致力于通过各种活动把世界范围内各个不同领域的个体联系起来。这样的使命和愿景之下，EOS VC和区块链开发者社区保持紧密联系。获得更多信息，请访问block.one 和 vc.eos.io。
重要通知：所有提供的材料都受此重要通知的约束，您必须自行熟悉此间条款。该通知包含与我们软件、出版物、商标、第三方资源以及前瞻性声明相关的信息、限制和约束内容。通过访问我们的材料，您接收并同意此通知的条款。
原文/Original：
We interviewed Mário Alves, Founder & CEO of TAIKAI, an open innovation platform which aims to change the future of work, collaboration, and problem solving.
Could you introduce TAIKAI for us?
Organizations face more challenges than ever nowadays. However, sometimes solutions can lack enough perspective, or challenges can even go unsolved. TAIKAI is changing that by bringing together talent from around the world to solve challenges in an open, collaborative environment.
The meaning of TAIKAI or 大会 (“coopetition” in Japanese Kanji) is the act of joining competing forces together to cooperate on a mutually beneficial solution. Companies can improve the speed and quality of their solution development by opening up their innovation processes.
We help organizations run innovation challenges and hackathons with our web platform. It facilitates the entire process, from challenge creation, through applications and entries, until finally a winner is voted for and rewarded. This is all done online in a fully transparent way.
Open online challenges can yield different results than classic approaches. They can improve quality and diversity of solutions, and also be more sustainable and cost-efficient for organizations.
Open competitions can be more inclusive too. Instead of only reaching your local community, anyone in the world with internet access can join in and contribute with their own vision.
What inspired you to create TAIKAI?
In a global survey conducted by LinkedIn, 37% of respondents said their current job does not fully utilize their skills or challenge them enough. This means that a lot of talent is not being put to productive use, which we think is a huge waste. In 2018, along with our investors, we saw that there was a need to solve this problem.
Creating TAIKAI was a response to that problem. It provides a way to build a better future for misused talent, and for companies that are looking for different solutions when they face a challenge.
Why did you decide to use blockchain technology, and specifically EOSIO?
When I was first introduced to the concepts of blockchain technology four years ago, I started going down the rabbit hole and just fell in love.
Once I had started learning about it, I quickly found myself explaining it to my friends and family. It wasn’t long before I was speaking to larger audiences at companies and universities. Interest continued to grow quickly, and I founded Blockchain Center Portugal, which became one of the largest communities of blockchain tech in Portugal.
When I started TAIKAI along with my co-founder Helder, we both saw the value in using tokenization as a way to provide a transparent and auditable selection process for use in hackathons and other innovation challenges. We also saw blockchain as a way to bring a new gamification layer into the platform, so it was a part of our plan from the early iterations.
No other currently existing innovation platform in the market had integrated either of these two concepts and we knew it could be a game-changer. But choosing a blockchain can be difficult, though: the number of existing blockchains and platforms continues to grow, and filtering the noise is not an easy task.
We tried to avoid maximalist visions and focused objectively on what is needed to build a successful app. We wanted a blockchain platform that could provide us a scalable, easy to use, cost-efficient and trustworthy solution and that choice was obvious: EOSIO.
For us, it was important that the regular user wouldn’t notice any difference between using our platform and a non-blockchain platform. It wouldn’t be possible to provide such a seamless experience with any other blockchain.
What stage is TAIKAI at?
It has been a year since we launched and the results have been great:
- Hosted 17 innovation challenges by 12 organisations
- 4000+ participants
- Approximately 500 open source projects built
After successfully bringing on board some of the biggest Portuguese companies and universities, we are looking to expand. We actively seek new clients, communities and partners all over the world so that we can showcase our platform globally. In addition, we are launching our own initiatives focused on social good.
What are the challenges you have had to overcome, and how did you do it?
Although we specialise in helping other companies solve challenges, we do have to solve some challenges of our own – finding the right talent is without a doubt the hardest of them all! It all starts with convincing the first person, then it gets easier along the way.
I was fortunate that the first person I convinced was Helder, my co-founder. He’s a coding machine, with a great product vision and a huge passion for blockchain tech. Together we managed to build an incredible team, and that is what truly makes the difference.
Convincing companies and large institutions to externalize their innovation processes or use technology like blockchain was also hard, and still is. There isn’t a magic formula to fix it, but we find that persevering and providing results is a good way to show companies that it actually works.
What are your plans for scaling?
Scaling has been in our DNA since day one. In terms of technology and communications, we’ve always built our product to be ready to scale at any time. A crisis of the kind we are collectively living through right now unites the world and shows that physical borders are just concepts we’ve built as human beings.
As an eternal optimist, I truly believe that the process of scaling is about always trying to bring value to one more person or company. The natural result out of that is exponential growth. We have been speaking with lots of companies and partners around the globe, as well as investors. They are thrilled about our product and our vision and we are planning to have our first international challenges soon.
What EOSIO community initiatives have you engaged in and how has the EOSIO Community responded to TAIKAI?
The EOSIO community was a big part of our success, in both direct and indirect ways. Block.one gave us guidance on how we could build a solid product using EOSIO technology when we first started TAIKAI.
We have also participated in an event hosted by SVK Crypto and its amazing CEO Shane Kehoe. We have seen how hackathons brought amazing solutions to the community and we’re avid listeners of the “Everything EOS” podcast.
There are also some very good projects within the community that we have interacted with and we hope to launch joint challenges with some of those projects soon. All of this shows that we couldn’t have chosen a better community to share our journey with.
Can you introduce your team and tell us what makes them/it special?
Economist by trade, technologist by heart. I have worked as a consultant at PwC and as an Investment Banker. I’m passionate about innovation and blockchain, and in 2018 I founded Blockchain Center Portugal, a Portuguese blockchain community.
I help the team in sales, marketing and product development, jumping from department to department like my favourite video character: Super Mario of course!
When I say I have an incredible team, I truly mean it. Helder, our CTO and co-founder, is both practical and technically gifted. He has built the entire backend and blockchain system we have in place, all while helping me envision the whole product and being our office DJ!
Henrique is our UX/UI Lead and is tasked with building beautiful interfaces. He is also the resident hackathon champion. Last time he counted, he had 10 winning projects!
Vanessa is our voice at TAIKAI, dealing with Marketing and Project Management while keeping office sanity in check.
Diogo brings his coolness and easygoing attitude to the table to interact with our clients, having previously led innovation and acceleration programs. He is passionate about shaping the future of what work looks like.
What other projects have you partnered with?
We work with Microsoft via their “Microsoft for Startups” program, as well as a number of Portuguese universities We’re part of the largest communities of Portuguese startups and of course, Bright Pixel, our investors, are very focused on blockchain projects.
Recently we’ve launched a new initiative called Fight COVID-19 Open Challenge to help companies and individuals to cooperate and produce creative solutions which can help fight against the current epidemic of Coronavirus. We hope that our community of more than 120 companies and 4500 volunteers will be able to help contribute to the worldwide effort to deal with the pandemic.
Where do you see TAIKAI in the future?
Our vision is to create a future where highly specialized individuals can look for challenge-based opportunities from different industries.
We provide the right space and the environment for innovators to work on challenges posted by companies or communities, present solutions to them, and get rewarded for it. This also allows them to gain reputation by displaying their innovations or solutions to the community.
Any other aspects you think people should know about your company?
If you believe that our vision is possible and you’re keen on participating in hackathons and competitions, join us today. We’ll try to make sure that you won’t regret it.
If you represent a company or other organization, do not be afraid to open up your innovation processes. I truly believe that you have more to gain by making your challenges visible, than keeping them internal.
Why are hackathons and competitions able to produce so many innovative solutions to problems?
Hackathons and competitions draw people out of their comfort zone. It is that place where the magic truly happens. By collaborating with each other, in a different setting, they’re able to produce ideas and projects that usually wouldn’t happen in a corporate scenario.
This is something that already happens with teams that frequently work together, so imagine what it can do with people from different geographies and cultures. A team composed of Japanese, French, and Canadian participants that together collaborate to build a solution? This may seem like the beginning of an old joke, but it can actually be the reality of the future and we definitely want to be a part of making it happen.
How do you want readers to remember TAIKAI in one sentence?
We want people to see us as the Github of open innovation, where an individual is able to work with NASA one day and Google the next.
. . .
Building on EOSIO?
Our #BuiltOnEOSIO series showcases some of the amazing projects leveraging EOSIO technology to build a more secure and connected world. If you would like to suggest a project for us to feature please send an email to spotlight@block.one for our Developer Relations team to review.
- Block.one Developer Relations team
. . .
TAIKAI is a recipient of an EOS VC grant. To learn more about Block.one’s VC grant recipients, please visit the EOS VC website at vc.eos.io.
About EOS VC
Block.one’s EOS VC program offers developers and entrepreneurs the funding they need to create community-driven businesses leveraging EOSIO. It provides support through venture capital partnership funds that aim to achieve sustained utilization of the EOSIO ecosystem by investing in a concentrated and diversified portfolio of blockchain-focused companies building on the EOSIO software. For further information, please visit block.one and vc.eos.io
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原文链接/Original URL:
