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WORLD CHANGING IDEAS

What we’re looking for when we judge your 2023 World Changing Ideas entries

Applications are open for Fast Company’s 7th annual World Changing Ideas Awards. This is how we think about the entries.

What we’re looking for when we judge your 2023 World Changing Ideas entries

BY Fast Company Staff2 minute read

The World Changing Ideas awards honor products, concepts, companies, policies, and designs that are pursuing innovation for good. We’d love to see as many inspiring entries as possible, so we want to let you know a bit more about what we’re looking for.

The winners for 2022 included everything from Ford’s new electric pick-up truck and BlocPower’s work decarbonizing urban buildings to GAF Energy’s solar panel shingles and WaterLight’s lamp powered by seawater. There were also groups working on new strategies to improve the way society functions: from rectifying overly harsh prison sentences to helping workers fight for rights to providing a basic income to financially strapped mothers. But hundreds more projects are named as finalists and honorable mentions, and they all rate well into the four metrics we use to judge entries: impact, design, scalability, and ingenuity. Here’s what to think about as you apply.

Impact

We want projects that have created (or are trying to create) substantive, positive change in the world. We also want to make sure the impact is in important areas, places where the positive change will valuably improve lives, society, or the environment—not just business bottom lines. Impact can, of course, mean different things. We are interested in both projects that will create enormous change for a small number of people, as well as projects that will create small but substantive change for an enormous number of people. Either way, we want the projects to indeed be world changing.

Design

We mean this both conceptually and physically. We want projects that have well-thought-out plans for how they’ll create their impact—and how they’ll avoid potential negative externalities. Functionality and aesthetics are also important: A valuable idea won’t gain traction if it’s difficult, or unpleasant, to use.

Scalability

Entries may be small right now, but do they have the potential to grow and bring the change to more people? We’re looking for ideas that have the ability to change the world, so their potential reach should be large, even if it’s only serving a small number of people at the moment. If it’s only designed to serve a small, but crucial market, then it should be clear that you’ll be able to expand to that entire market.

Ingenuity

Because we limit entries to projects that debuted in the last calendar year, we are interested in projects that range from conceptual to just-launched to fully operational: We want to give credit to projects on a large spectrum between concept and execution. But no matter what stage the idea is in, it should be bold, new, and innovative. We don’t want to award a project that is a tweak that iterates on an existing world changing idea. The best entries offer a pathbreaking solution to an important problem.

We have more than 40 categories this year, including several new ones in agriculture, personal finance, and workplace. And as the world enters its fourth year of dealing with COVID-19, and climate emergencies continue to accelerate, we’ve added a Rapid Response category. This award is for projects that are able to launch quickly and pivot as needed in the face of disasters around the world.

The winners of our awards are seen by millions of people, and our hope is we can support the growth of positive social innovation by showcasing the best examples—whether from a major corporation or a small nonprofit—to the business community, and that our finalists get enough exposure so they can scale even further.

We’ll be accepting entries until December 9, 2022. Apply here.

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