Winning innovation competitions or innovation awards can be a major achievement and proof of you and your teams ability to innovate. Which innovation competitions or awards should you submit to? Are there any downsides to submitting and winning a competiton or an award?

In this weeks show, we discuss the structures and thinking behind innovation competitions and innovations awards and I share the 5 most common mistakes I've experienced as a judge.

Innovation Awards

* A special guest, Tom Kuczmarski, shared an update on the Chicago Innovation Awards.

* This award is now in its 15th year.

* Of the ~200 awards given in the past, 100% of the companies and organizations are still around.

* This year they will give out 10 awards including some new ones such as; Social Innovation, Peoples Choice Awards and Neighborhood Awards.

* Criteria they use to select the winner of the Chicago Innovation Award?

* What was the customer need the innovation addressed?

* What was the impact from the innovation?

* Was their a competitive response? (indication of impact since others attempt to copy)

* Did the innovation create a new category?

Innovation Competitions

* What are the different type of innovation competitions?

* Solution search like Idea Connection

* Broad new ideas

* Narrow/focused new ideas

* Approaches to applying to a competition

* Forward approach: Read the competition and solve for the ask proposed in competition material

* Backward approach: Take an idea you already have and find a competition where it can be applied

5 Most Common Mistakes

* Not doing sufficient research on the space to fully understand the problem/ask beyond what was presented in the competition material.

* Not fully reading/understand the ask. Make sure you don't inject assumptions and bias into crafting your solution to a misunderstood ask.

* Not following the guidelines on submissions. Understand what/how/format of the submission.

* Submitting an weak/shallow submission. Apply some deep thinking (go beyond the obvious) and create a killer presentation/pitch. Don't short change it.

* Not understanding the IP (intellectual property) rules for the competition.

Show Links:

* Idea Connection

* Chicago Innovation Awards

* Tom Kuczmarski interview on a previous episode of Killer Innovation