Why is open innovation essential in 2025 and beyond?

The metals and mining industry is entering a decisive era. Stricter environmental regulations, rising costs from declining ore grades, and pressure to improve safety and sustainability are reshaping how companies operate. At the same time, market volatility and supply chain uncertainty demand greater agility than ever before.

Yet where some see obstacles, others see opportunity. By embracing open innovation, metals and mining organizations can turn today’s pressures into catalysts for transformation, accelerating digital adoption, improving efficiency, and unlocking new sources of value.

Why Open Innovation Works

Traditional R&D alone cannot keep pace with the scale and complexity of the challenges ahead. Open innovation allows companies to reach beyond their internal teams and collaborate with startups, researchers, and global experts. This brings fresh perspectives, reduces risk, and accelerates the delivery of practical, scalable solutions.

For an industry built on long investment cycles and high capital intensity, open innovation introduces agility, speed, and access to disruptive technologies, strengths that are difficult to achieve in-house

Success Stories From NineSigma

Codelco —Redefining Worker Safety

NineSigma partnered with Codelco to launch a global open innovation challenge targeting automation of the hazardous slag passage opening process. The challenge brought in robotics experts worldwide, evaluated multiple technology proposals, and accelerated pilot deployments.
Resulting in automated systems that significantly reduced workers’ exposure to extreme heat and radiation while increasing operational uptime. Read more.

Global Metal Powder Producer—Enhancing Market Competitiveness

Through a NineSigma-managed challenge, a leading metal powder producer sourced novel additive-free treatments that improve the flowability of ultra-fine gas-atomized metal powders. This innovation is meant to enhance product quality and process reliability and strengthen supply chain resilience, opening doors to stringent aerospace and medical markets. Read more.

Vale Base Metals—Turning Waste into Value

In collaboration with NineSigma, the Pyrrhotite Resource Recovery Innovation Challenge was launched to pioneer new ways of turning pyrrhotite, a former mining waste byproduct, into valuable resources and critical materials for a cleaner, greener future. From hundreds of global submissions, three innovative solutions were selected for funding and further development, each offering scalable methods to recover valuable metals and sulphur. This challenge epitomized NineSigma’s role in accelerating circular mining, enabling clients to transform waste liabilities into sustainable revenue streams. Read more.

These cases demonstrate how open innovation translates into measurable business impact, safer workplaces, higher productivity, stronger sustainability credentials, and enhanced market growth.

Building Resilience for the Future

The future of metals and mining will be defined by how well companies adapt, balancing operational efficiency, sustainability, and competitiveness. Open innovation provides a proven pathway to:

–Accelerate technology adoption
–Reduce development time and costs
–Improve safety and environmental performance
–Unlock new markets and revenue streams

In a sector where the pace of change is only increasing, the time to act is now!

Interested in learning more or exploring a partnership?