AUB President’s Innovation Challenge

AUB President’s Innovation Challenge 2021 Finalists

Application Submission Deadline

12 September 2021

Semifinalist Announcement

19 September 2021

Final Pitching and Award Ceremony

28 October 2021

Year 2021 Themes

The Future Of Health

More than ever, disruptive innovation in health including developing new products, technologies, services, and delivery methods is needed to improve people’s health. In the pandemic era, medical innovations could prevent or help better manage new or common chronic diseases and reduce the economic impact of diseases.
Medical solutions have made astonishing advances, but the delivery of health care is often costly, inefficient, ineffective, and user unfriendly. Problems ranging from costs to medical errors beg for ingenious solutions-and enormous investments.
On the technology front, the future of healthcare is shaping up in front of our very eyes with advances in digital healthcare technologies, such as artificial intelligence, VR/AR, 3D-printing, robotics, or nanotechnology. More solutions for prominent problems remain in demand.

Data-driven Technology for Agriculture

As the global population continues to grow and resources are becoming more exhausted, farmers are faced with the challenge to produce more, with less. Data-driven agriculture is a solution for increasing productivity and better utilization resources.
With modern technology, data-driven farmers may be able to measure all aspects of their business, from soil and crop performance to financials. Having insight into data and managing it is crucial for increasing farmer’s productivity, sustainability, and profitability.
Today, “data-driven farming” includes using various modern technologies which collect precise and accurate farm data, such as: Soil and crop sensors, variable rate technology, yield mapping technology, weather stations, farm management software.

Alternate and Circular Economy

Many people are finding that the economy no longer works for them. Even after obtaining an education, gathering skills and training, hard work and paying their dues, achieving success or merely comfortable survival has become very difficult.
The Alternative Economy is an economic structure that is separate from, and operates largely independently of, the traditional economy. People are turning away from the deteriorating situation and are helping to develop an Alternate Economy as both a healthy survival mechanism and as a means of taking charge.
Creativity can contribute to the Alternate Economy in different ways with one commonality is that it serves that needs of people and the Public-Good first and robs the ability of outsiders to control people economically.
Also, in the drive to creating sustainability, the circular economy is a growing force for change. The regenerative nature of reinvesting resources and waste products back into sustainable production means that businesses can operate more efficiently and with less negative environmental impact.

The Internet of Behaviors

The internet of behaviors (IoB) is emerging as many technologies capture and use the “digital dust” of peoples’ daily lives. The IoB combines existing technologies that focus on the individual directly – facial recognition, location tracking and big data for example – and connects the resulting data to associated behavioral events, such as cash purchases or device usage.

Organizations use this data to influence human behavior. Gartner predicts that by year-end 2025, over half of the world’s population will be subject to at least one IoB program, whether it be commercial or governmental. While the IoB is technically possible, there will be extensive ethical and societal debates about the different approaches employed to affect behavior.

Today, the need is to deploy the same technology in the favor and protection of the counter end. On the end-user’s side instead of the organizations’ side. Innovations in IoB must target the protection and improvement of users lives, to serve the Public-Good first and reduce the ability of outsiders to take advantage of people data.

Anywhere Operations

Anywhere operations is more than simply working from home or interacting with customers virtually – it also delivers unique value-add experiences across five core areas: collaboration and productivity, secure and inclusive remote access, cloud and edge infrastructure, quantification of the digital experience and automation to support remote operations. According to Gartner report 2021, by the end of 2023, 40% of organizations will have applied anywhere operations to deliver optimized and blended virtual and physical customer and employee experiences.

The Environmental Conservation

The issues surrounding our environment keep evolving, however, there are three major ones that affect the majority of them overall: global warming and climate change; water pollution and ocean acidification; and loss of biodiversity.
Innovations today need to target the protection, preservation, management, or restoration of natural environments and the ecological communities.

Not sure where to start? Click here to find Useful Resources

Year 2021 Winners

winners pic 2021
winners pic 2021