About the Challenge

The Inclusive Innovation Challenge (IIC) is the flagship initiative of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy (IDE). We award over one million dollars in prizes to Inclusive Innovators: organizations around the world that are using technology to solve a grand challenge of our time — to create shared prosperity by reinventing the future of work.

More than 70 Core Judges and an expert Champion Committee will select 16 winners from the applying organizations.

More than $1 million will be awarded to these Winners, in the following amounts:

• Four grand prize winners each receive $150,000. 
• Twelve winners each receive $35,000.
  

Grand Prize Winner 99Degrees receives their prize at the IIC Celebration at the MIT Media Lab in 2016

2017 IIC Award Categories
We will continue to celebrate tech-driven organizations that create economic opportunity in the digital era in the second year of the IIC. This year’s award categories are:

• Skills Development & Opportunity Matching:  How do we enable workers to succeed in and access the work opportunities of the future?
• Income Growth & Job Creation:  How do we ensure that workers earn sufficient and growing incomes to achieve satisfactory quality of life and living standards? How do we reimagine struggling industries and create new opportunities for work?
• Technology Access:  How do we connect more people with internet and technology access, regardless of age, location, education, or ability?
• Financial Inclusion:  How do we ensure financial security and stability for more people? How do we enable more people to access the benefits of financial services? 

Call for Entries 
The second annual IIC launches on March 22, 2017. For-profit and non-profit organizations of any size, age, or type and from any nation are encouraged to apply.

Why Inclusive Innovation?
We live in perhaps the greatest age of technological innovation in human history. Yet many people are not experiencing the benefits of this progress, despite actively seeking to more fully participate in and benefit from new educational, financial, and work opportunities. 

Many jobs that were once pathways to guaranteed prosperity have dramatically changed or disappeared. The IIC believes that Inclusive Innovators, wielding technology as a tool, are creating solutions to this challenge today. By reinventing the future of work, Inclusive Innovators are empowering people to improve their income and participate more fully in our rapidly evolving digital economy.

MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy
The MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy (IDE) is led by Professor Erik Brynjolfsson and co-director Andrew McAfee. The IDE explores how people and businesses will work, interact, and prosper in an era of profound digital transformation. Brynjolfsson and McAfee launched the IIC in 2015 to ensure that the benefits of digital progress are shared by all.