Floriade Werkt! Challenge
How will you help feeding our future?
We are looking for smart world-class business concepts and models
The entry has closed,
In the year 2050 approximately 70% of the 9 billion people on this earth live in urban deltas and metropolitan areas. The Province of Flevoland in the Netherlands challenges middle and small companies, (inter-)national partnerships and entrepreneurial students to come with innovative solutions in the form of business concepts and models. We are looking for innovations that take care of or stimulate a sustainable feeding future for the billions of people living in the cities of the future. The winners of the Floriade Werkt! Challenge get the chance to realize their innovation with a team of experts in an accelerator program and present it to the world during Floriade 2022 in Almere.
The challenge consists of three themed (sub)challenges.
Sub challenge 1: Smart soil, sustainable soil usage
A lively and good soil quality makes sure that crops grow well and that the harvest has a high food value with a better taste. Nonetheless is 33% of our world wide cultural soil or farmland in direct danger. By the means of impoverishment, salinization, atomization, leaching, and compaction the world is losing healthy cultural soil or farmland in a rapid tempo.
We are looking for innovative business concepts and models that give a positive impulse or change to the usage of our soil and bring a solution to at least one of these 2 questions:
- Which techniques can slow down depletion, atomization, leaching, and compaction of our cultural lands?
- How can we use waste from the food chain to preserve, maintain or improve the quality of our soil?
Sub challenge 2: Smart food chain, more yield & less waste
In our future smart food chain less food gets spilled and waste as such does no longer exist. When we renew the food chain and stimulate and improve co-operation, we can slow down wastage and use residues to make new products and raw materials. That process creates higher yield, a lower impact on the environment and new economic chances in the food chain.
We are looking for innovative business concepts and models that renew the food chain and give a solution for at least one of these 2 questions:
- How can we shape the food chain (from land to shopping basket) so that we spill less food?
- What are the business models, the new forms of co-operation and the new techniques to assimilate residues to attractive food or valuable raw materials?
Sub challenge 3: Smart feeding; grow old healthier & recover quicker
We learn more and more about the positive influence of feeding on our health. The right food can contribute to prevent lifestyle diseases, to a quicker recovery and a healthier way of getting older. Moreover, this leads to a large saving on health care costs.
We are looking for innovative business concepts and models that help consumers make responsible feeding choices and that answer at least one of the following 2 questions:
- Which solutions help consumers make responsible feeding choices that foster their health and or life style?
- What are new, sustainable applications of high quality plant compounds in feeding that contribute to the battle against life style diseases?
For whom?
The Floriade Werkt! Challenge challenges the following groups to share their innovations, their ideas and innovative power:
- Middle and small companies in the Province of Flevoland
- (Inter)national partnerships between business and research
- Entrepreneurial students
Per category a jury selects 1 winner.
How does it work?
The entry periodes ended on the 10th of March 2017. For an overview of entries check this website.
At the 16th of March a co-creation event will be hosted for all the participants and their teams. The event will contain workshops and the possibility to form teams. At the end of the day the expert commission will make a final selection of the max. 30 most promising concepts (around 8-12 concepts per sub challenge). They get further expert guidance during the Lean Startup Day and the Peer Review Day, respectively at March the 21st and 23rd.
At the 31st of March the participants file a renewed version of their business plan.
The jury selects 9 teams during the Challenge Event at the 6th of April. These teams will be invited for a boot camp program and file their final version of the business plan at the 24th of May.
The teams present their plans on the 1st of June during Demo Day. The jury will chose 3 winning teams (one per group) that receive expert guidance to market introduction.