• The Cisco Global Problem Solver challenge aims to recognize student entrepreneurs that promote and accelerate the adoption of breakthrough technologies, products and services that drive economic development and/or solve social or environmental problems.

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  • Transformative change can happen only by tapping into the expertise of a broad pool of thinkers and doers. As part of our commitment to building the field of data science for social impact, data.org launched a $10 million data.org Inclusive Growth and Recovery Challenge. The challenge is an open call for breakthrough ideas that harness the power of data science to help people and communities thrive especially in the wake of COVID-19’s economic impact.

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  • The Harbor Freight Tools for Schools Prize for Teaching Excellence recognizes outstanding skilled trades programs at public high schools in the United States.

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  • Grow-NY is an unprecedented food and agriculture business competition that identifies, supports, and funds the top food, beverage, and agriculture innovations across the globe. The competition includes a $1 million top prize, mentorship, training, business development support, and tax incentives.

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  • Patents for Humanity is the United States Patent and Trademark Office's (USPTO) awards competition recognizing innovators who use game-changing technology to meet global humanitarian challenges. The program provides business incentives for reaching those in need: winners receive an acceleration certificate to expedite select proceedings at the USPTO, as well as public recognition of their work. 

    Accepting Submissions

  • A $5 million dollar prize pool calling for breakthrough education-to-employment partnerships to support Colorado’s young people.

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  • University teams are invited to create software that enables self-driving Indy Lights race cars to compete in a head-to-head race on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway track. The development of such software can help speed the commercialization of full autonomous vehicles and enhance existing advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) in people-driven cars. These technologies help drivers remain in control and avoid accidents by prompting awareness and improving accuracy.

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  • NFTE's World Series of Innovation invites young people to get involved in solving the biggest challenges facing humanity today and help advance the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

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  • The Challenge is a $10 million commitment by Fannie Mae to generate affordable housing solutions that will help Fannie Mae address the nation’s affordable housing issues by advancing sustainable communities–those providing residents integrated opportunities for employment, health and wellness, and education.

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  • The Drucker Prize continues to recognize the organization that best exemplifies Peter Drucker’s definition of innovation: “change that creates a new dimension of performance.” While only one organization will win the $100,000, everyone who applies will get something just as valuable: powerful new tools for effectiveness.

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  • The Stanford Center on Longevity Design Challenge offers cash prizes and free entrepreneur mentorship in a competition open to all university students around the world who want to design products and services which optimize long life for us all. This year’s challenge focuses on building longevity solutions with cross-generational teams.

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  • For more than 100 years, Thermador has delivered bold design, unmatched performance, and exceptional innovation in the kitchen and beyond. And now, Thermador invites the country’s top designers to unveil what makes their kitchen design truly exceptional.

    Accepting Submissions

  • Offering $10 Million in prize money, 76West is an unparalleled competition focused on growing entrepreneurs and attracting resources from the U.S. and around the world to build clean energy businesses and jobs in New York State’s Southern Tier Region.

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  • Zurich, a leading multi-line insurer, has launched the Innovation World Championship to provide a platform for inspiring innovators to showcase transformative technologies in their key business areas of mobility, smart homes and buildings, digital health and financial planning.

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  • The NSF 2026 Idea Machine is a contest through which the National Science Foundation seeks input on grand challenges or questions (i.e., Big Ideas) to inform its long-term planning. The contest invites the public and the scientific community to participate by submitting ideas and by commenting on other contestants’ ideas.

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  • GENIUS NY is a year-long business accelerator that awards five finalist teams a total of $3 million in investments. In addition, the program offers incubator space, company stipends, advisors, resources, programming, and connections, making it among the largest competitions of its kind across the globe. GENIUS NY is focused on Unmanned Systems; software, hardware, analytics, IoT.

    Accepting Submissions

  • The 2021 Social Shifters Global Innovation Challenge will take student ideas to the next level by bringing them to life while helping those students sharpen their social business skills. Many students have good ideas about solving social or environmental problems, and they’re ready to take action — but they don’t know where to start. Enter Social Shifters, an organization that helps students to manifest their ideas.

    Registration Now Open

  • Outstanding inventions in STEM and other creative fields are judged by a panel of National Inventors Hall of Fame Inductees and United States Patent and Trademark Office officials for feedback, brainstorming and encouragement on taking inventions to the next level of innovation

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  • Supported by former First Lady, Michelle Obama, Tufts University, and Child Obesity 180, the Active Schools Acceleration Project (ASAP) was a competition designed to identify and reward the most creative, impactful, and scalable school-based programs and technologies to promote children's physical activity.

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  • The ImagineNation Challenges seek to inspire, provoke, and promote innovation in health and health care that not only spur innovation, but help foster a community of innovators in Canada.

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  • The NSF We Are Mathematics Video Competition aims to bring mathematics to life in a way that can help to break down barriers for those who may not otherwise understand what it means to do advanced mathematics or conduct research in the mathematical sciences.

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  • Challenge producers are seeking novel ideas and bold solutions, developed using data from Novo Nordisk's marketed pen injectors, that deliver holistic and integrated care to improve and optimize diabetes management. They are interested in exploring, designing and co-developing solutions that will enhance patient experience, empower patients to improve their self-care to achieve a sense of normalcy, and enable smarter, more efficient management of diabetes.

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  • Sponsored by the National Science Foundation, this challenge asks community college students to propose innovative STEM-based solutions for real-world problems.

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  • Infant mortality in the US is on the rise -- and is impacting underserved communities and people of color more than anyone else. Our nation needs solutions from developers who can help reduce infant mortality through innovative use of technology. This challenge is intentionally focused on creating technology solutions that save lives in these populations and offer new and effective resources for those who serve them.

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  • The Elsevier Foundation believes that chemistry plays a critical role in developing a sustainable future. Chemists have a special responsibility to develop those new products, resources and processes to make that happen. The Elsevier Foundation-ISC3 Green & Sustainable Chemistry Challenge seeks to stimulate innovative chemistry research that helps the environment and low-resource communities in emerging and developing countries.

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  • INSPIRE. ENGAGE. LEAD. Young people are moments away from being tomorrow’s decision-makers and this program offers them a chance to practice their critical thinking, tap into their creativity, and offer their fresh perspective on issues within our society.

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  • The Bridging the Word Gap Challenge awarded $300,000 in prizes to support innovative solutions that can help promote early-language development among children from low-income families in the U.S.

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  • The goal of the National Science Foundation's VIZZIES Challenge is to communicate science, engineering and technology for education and journalistic purposes through public submissions in photography, illustration, games & apps, video and posters & graphics.

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  • The New England Biolabs Passion in Science Awards recognizes those within the scientific community working to solve many of today's challenges and honoring the 'unsung heroes' of the laboratory, who are dedicated to their cause.

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  • The National Science Foundation invited students to submit an original idea for a superhero, using modern nanotechnology research to inspire unique gear for their hero. Submissions included a short written entry, as well as a short video or comic, that illustrates the superhero's nanotechnology-enabled gear.

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  • Behold the world’s largest business idea competition. 43North gives out $5 million in cash prizes each year to some of the best and brightest entrepreneurs and startups from around the globe.

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  • The Dreampipe Challenge aims to stimulate the development of new or improved ways to help water utilities in developing countries mobilize adequate funding for non-revenue water (NRW) reduction activities.

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  • The Children's Prize seeks the best and most effective project that proposes to save the greatest number of children's lives with $250,000.

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  • The RELX Environmental Challenge seeks projects that advance sustainable access to safe water where it is presently at risk and/or develop access to improved sanitation.

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  • Developed by Project Paradigm (a private foundation) and the American Red Cross, the Paradigm Challenge asks youth ages 7-18 to generate new ideas to prevent injuries and fatalities from home fires - America's #1 disaster threat.

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  • A national competition that awarded $1 million in prizes for the best replicable, scalable innovations in city redevelopment and design that help make play easy, available and fun for kids and families.

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  • INFUSE aims to identify innovative ideas and technologies that will lead to sustainable and widespread improvements in immunisation delivery in developing countries.

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  • Inviting innovative ideas, the Nissan Innovation Garage asked contestants to submit their inventive concepts in 500 characters or less.

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  • This challenge is an opportunity for innovators to demonstrate how AI tools, such as deep learning and neural networks, can be used to predict unplanned hospital and skilled nursing facility (SNF) admissions and adverse events. The challenge will prioritize explainable AI solutions, which can work with front-line clinicians and patients to improve data feedback and drive quality improvements.

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  • The Female Founders in Tech program identifies and evaluates innovative technology solutions and unique talent for corporations while also providing access to capital, mentorship, and partnership opportunities to startups.

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  • “Our American Story” is a digital contest for students (8th-12th grades) designed to foster creativity, cooperative learning, critical examination, and discussion among our country’s next generation of leaders. This challenge is inspired by the foundational events that occurred in Virginia in 1619; stories of triumph, injustice, struggles, innovation, and success, and how they indelibly influenced and continue to shape today’s America.

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  • Founding partners NASA, NIKE, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the US Department of State formed LAUNCH. This event sought innovations that leverage or advance ‘green chemistry' to transform the system of materials and manufacturing to one that advances global economic growth, drives human prosperity and replenishes the planet's resources.

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  • HopeLab, the nonprofit organization sponsoring Ruckus Nation, challenged entrants to imagine a new product, fun and cool enough to make kids want to get up and move around. HopeLab supported the development, testing and distribution of products based on the best ideas.

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  • The Cade Museum Prize is an annual competition for early-stage inventors and entrepreneurs in Florida. The goals of the $50,000 prize are to provide seed capital and publicity for great ideas with market potential.

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  • CappSci Inventors at the Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum of Science in Miami is a 5-year, 1 million program to develop innovative solutions in the health and environmental sectors. The CappSci Inventors program solicits submissions of early stage inventions with local relevance and global significance.

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  • The Deloitte RightStep™ Innovation Prize sought to recognize a 501(c)(3) organization or a for profit organization with a social mission that has a proven approach that leverages technology innovatively to achieve key outcomes in education.

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  • The College Television Awards: The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation and mtvU host a national competition recognizing excellence in college student-produced video, digital and film work.

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  • In an effort to expand the boundaries of patient monitoring, Ford Motor Company and Henry Ford Health System challenged employees of both companies to find effective solutions using the automobile to facilitate connected health monitoring.

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  • Administered by the National Science Foundation, the BREAD Ideas Challenge called to the scientific community to identify the next big research foci for the BREAD program. The focus of BREAD, or Basic Research to Enable Agricultural Development, is on novel, transformative, basic research with direct relevance and potential application to smallholder agriculture in the developing world.

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  • Your World, Reimagined was a global design competition that asks professional and student designers to tackle an old, dilapidated, or run-down locale and redesign it for a new, improved use. Entries can range in focus from adaptive reuse to landscape reclamation or object redesign.

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  • In May 2013, COIN launched the Glorious Failure: In Search of Success Innovation Challenge, which was designed to showcase and accelerate innovators with high-growth potential ventures who are willing to share their lessons learned from obstacles and adversity.

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  • Project HeHa (HeHa means super happiness), believes that people have a deep and fundamental need to be happy and to help others become happy too. This Challenge encouraged entrepreneurs and creators to come up with new ideas or ways to tap into unmet needs and co-create a happier world. Project HeHa provided over $100,000 in cash prizes, and up to $1M in potential investment.

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  • The Walgreens Expressions Challenge was designed for teens to showcase their creative perspective on healthy lifestyle choices. The Challenge motivates participants to voice their opinion on critical life issues they face daily through creative writing, visual arts and media arts.

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  • Crash the Parties was an embedded reporter competition developed by Fuse and Voto Latino to bring excitement and diverse voices to the 2016 election. Two lucky winners reported from the Democratic and Republican National Conventions.

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  • The National Spelling Bee Spellebrity Video Contest is an opportunity for individuals or teams of up to four people to brainstorm, film and edit a video of up to five minutes in length that inspires other students to want to read.

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  • Inspire Mountain View awarded grants to projects and programs that make Mountain View a more compassionate and equitable community, and a better place to work and play.

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  • Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, the Million Hearts Hypertension Control Challenge recognizes practices and systems that are successful in working with patients to achieve exemplary hypertension control rates greater than 70%, improve understanding of successful implementation strategies at the health system level, and motivate practices and health systems to intensify their hypertension control efforts.

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  • FLEX (Future Leaders Exchange) students, alumni, host family members, and placement organization representatives were among those invited to submit their reflections on the impact the FLEX program has had on their lives.

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  • The RuleBreaker Awards honors and celebrates those entrepreneurs who have succeeded by doing it their way. Some have created whole new industries; others have revolutionized industries that have existed for hundreds of years.

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  • Inspired by the Educate to Innovate Campaign, President Obama's initiative to promote a renewed focus on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) education, the goal is to motivate interest in STEM learning among America's youth by tapping into students' natural passion for playing and making video games.

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  • The National Science Foundation, Division of Astronomical Sciences along with Astronomy magazine and Discover magazine, is holding a unique contest centered on capturing images of the expected bright Comet ISON (C/2012S1).

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