EU Prize for Women Innovators - SWFS-Prize-2019

Deadline: Jan 16, 2019  
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Specific Challenge:

Women are underrepresented in terms of creating innovative enterprises. This is an untapped potential for Europe, which needs to optimise all available resources to remain competitive and find solutions to our societal challenges.

This award scheme recognises the role of women in bringing about game-changing innovations to market honouring the outstanding achievements of women running innovative companies. The "EU Prize for Women Innovators" will be awarded to up to four women innovators in total (three women and one young woman innovator, so-called 'rising innovator') who have created the largest impact on the innovation ecosystem by transforming ideas into new and advanced products and/or services for the benefit and wealth of the European citizens.

Three prizes of EUR 0,1 million each and one prize of EUR 0.05 million in the 'rising innovator' category: EUR 0.35 million from the 2018 budget and EUR 0.35 million from the 2019 budget.

The specific rules of the contest will be published each year by the European Commission (on the Participant Portal but also actively publicised elsewhere to maximise participation), which will directly launch and manage the contest and award the prize based on the judgement of independent experts.

Scope:

This activity directly aimed at supporting the development and implementation of evidence base for R&I policies and supporting various groups of stakeholders is excluded from the delegation to REA and will be managed by the Commission services.

It is expected that this action will continue in 2020.

Expected Impact:

The prizes will boost public awareness of the potential, importance and contribution of women to the innovation ecosystem and create strong role models inspiring other women to become innovators themselves.

Cross-cutting Priorities:

Gender
Open Innovation
 

The contestant must be a woman. For the Rising Innovator Award, the contestant must be a woman aged 35 years or under.

The contestant must be an ordinarily resident of an EU Member State or of a country associated to Horizon 2020.

The contestant must be the founder or co-founder of an existing and active company which was registered before 1 January year-1[[For the contest opening in 2018: 1 January 2017;

for the contest opening in 2019: 1 January 2018; for the contest opening in 2020: 1 January 2019.]]].

The contestant will have to provide proof of eligibility and a written presentation of her achievements, as well as support their applications with a link to a video of maximum 90 seconds. The submission consists of a complete application.

For the common Rules of Contest for Prizes please see General Annex F of the work programme.

Proposal page limits and layout: Please refer to the application template. 
 

Eligible applications will be evaluated by a High-Level Jury. The High-Level Jury will consist of a group of independent experts from business, finance and academia appointed by the Commission.

The prize will be awarded, after closure of the contest, to the contestants who in the opinion of the jury best address the following cumulative criteria:

- Breakthrough Innovation – the company funded/co-funded by the contestant provides cutting edge product or service

- Impact – the cutting edge product or service brings major benefits to citizens and society and the economy

- Inspiration – the contestant has shown active leadership and her role has influenced the success of the company. The contestant has the potential to inspire others.

4. Indicative time for evaluation and award of prizes: 
All the contestants will be informed in the second quarter 2018 about the outcome of the contest.
 

Members of consortium are not required to conclude a consortium agreement as this is a recognition prize and not a grant