The TU Delft Ideation Contest is a student competition for individuals and teams of up to six persons. You can submit your solutions for societal problems. The organisation is looking for innovations in the areas of energy, the built environment, food security and medical technology. The Contest is a proven concept at the Universities of Eindhoven and Twente which receive about 100 submissions a year. This year, TU Delft and Wageningen University are joining in. The national final is in June.

There are two levels in the contest.

• The Ideation Award is for business ideas, solutions to problems or a vision of something you want to turn into reality. Submissions to this category are preliminary sketches, calculations, photos or descriptions of the idea.
• The Prototyping Award is for advanced ideas in the form of a prototype, scale model or business plan.

The first 30 submissions will receive EUR 50. All finalists will be awarded EUR 250 to work on the presentation of their idea. The winners of the university final in both categories will be awarded EUR 5,000. There will be a national final after the summer.

Gertjan de Werk, an engineer at the Valorisation Centre brought the contest to TU Delft. “We need a lot of inspiration to deal with the transitions that await us. I see that the students have plenty of ideas and this contest gives them the chance to further work out those ideas.”

Many of the modules complement the contest well, De Werk says. He names Sustainability into Practice, Clean Tech Business Study, and Ideation Contest.  Apart from the TU Delft Ideation Contest, there are comparable contests at the Universities of Eindhoven, Twente and Wageningen.