With 1 million euro up for grab, seems like there’s more reason to help create a sustainable fashion future.
Bringing forth the agenda of having a circular business model, H&M Foundation launches its fifth edition of the Global Change Awards (GCA). It’s known as the Nobel Prize of fashion as it’s one of the biggest challenges in the globe for early stage innovation.
With that said, the Swedish retail giant, in partnership with KTH Royal Institute of Technology and Accenture, is now looking for game-changing fashion innovators who can break the linear traditions of fashion and completely change the way garments are designed, produced, shipped, bought, used, and recycled.
According to Tariq Fancy, Founder of Rumie and CIO of Sustainable Investing, BlackRock, “The Global Change Awards focuses some of the best minds from the industry on the critical challenge of building circular business models that can better prepare humanity for a sustainable future for the planet and generations to come.”
Over the years, the GCA has received more than 15,000 entries from 182 countries. In addition to that, two finalists actually came from the Philippines when it was first launched.
This year, an international expert panel on fashion will be choosing five most promising innovations that will be revealed in Stockholm in April. The winners will share a 1 million euro grant, and will embark to a one-year tailor-made Innovation Accelerator Program. Which also means that they get to go to Stockholm, New York and Hong Kong where they can take their ideas to the next level, bring them to scale and out of the market as quickly as possible.|
“This year we look for innovations within three themes; ideas putting the consumer at the center, digital ideas connecting the dots throughout the fashion value chain, and design ideas with a circular mindset—from garments to the packages we ship clothes in. The common denominator is the urgent opportunity the themes provide for fashion to operate within the planetary boundaries,” H&M Foundation’s Innovation Lead Erik Bang explained.
So what are you waiting for? Submission deadline is on 16 October 2019. You’ll never know, you might be the fashion innovator the world is waiting for.
Neither the H&M Foundation nor H&M Group will take any equity or intellectual property rights in the innovation. The aim is to find innovations that allow major change for the entire industry, and the winner can collaborate with whoever they want.
