IBC Innovation Awards

To be in with a chance of winning an IBC Innovation Award, make sure you check these guidelines carefully before completing your entry:

- The IBC Innovation Awards celebrate the partnership between technology companies and their customers. Each award is presented to the end user company, but the honour is shared with their technical supporters. Technology partners will be clearly identified and promoted in marketing around the Awards shortlist and in the Awards Ceremony.

- Entries are for completed innovation projects, not open-ended proof of concept undertakings. The relevant timeframe for entries runs from June 2023 to 31 July 2024.

- For the Social Impact category, you can nominate your own projects. It is not necessary to have deployed new technology, but you do need to be clear about the social purpose, the community that benefits and the results of the initiative, focused on the year from Jun 2023 to the end of July 2024.

- For the Environment & Sustainability Award, this also does not rely on deploying new technology. The end user may well also be the entrant. You need to be clear about the impact on your organisation/ the industry/ the wider community.

- The IBC Innovation Awards are NOT product awards. Nominations for new technology or products without an end user will be rejected at the first stage. So too will be sales of standard products or services which involve no collaborative development and implementation. 

- Be clear in your entry about who the end user is, the way in which technical partners and users collaborated to develop the solution, and how the project has helped them. 

- Submission forms must reach IBC by 23:59 GMT on Friday, 7th of June. Entries can be made by either the end user or by a technology partner, or by a company’s PR agency, provided all parties are happy for the project to be submitted.

- IBC Innovation Awards are presented to the end user. If you are entering on behalf of a supplier it is important that you discuss it with the end user before submitting the entry. Entries without the active co-operation of the end user will not be considered.

- A winning entry will demonstrate an innovative and imaginative solution to a real technical, creative or commercial challenge. Your best chance of winning is to demonstrate strong collaboration between a user and technology partner. A simple, low-cost system is just as likely to win as a multi-million dollar redevelopment project.

- Projects can involve one technology partner or bring together many partners. The project can be led by a supplier or by an in-house team. There is space on the entry form for you to list all the technical partners.

- There are five categories: for the most innovative project in Content Creation, Content Distribution, Content Everywhere, Environment & Sustainability and Social Impact. You will select a category for your project on the entry form, although the judges will move it to another category if they think it is a better fit. Do not enter the same project in more than one category.

- Your entry should be for a system or initiative which has been implemented and is in regular use or is for a one-off event which has taken place by the middle of 2024. The judges look for demonstrable success in the project, so it is unlikely that a work in progress will reach the final shortlist.

- While the judges welcome systems or initiatives which are cumulative in their success and have been developed or implemented over an extended period, perhaps even years, the pace of change in our industry means those that have not at least made a step change in the last year are unlikely to be contenders.

- Your entry will be judged on the information you provide on the entry form, so make sure this is complete and compelling. You should describe the challenges and context faced by the user, and how the project uses innovative technology or to solve them. The judges may ask for further clarification, but in general they form their opinion on what they read on the form.

- For the Social Impact category, you will need to demonstrate how the project addresses a societal need, this could be needed within the industry or the wider world. With this award, it is not necessary to demonstrate the use of new technology, unless it is relevant. Winners in the past have included a programme from Turkish national broadcaster TRT to develop journalism skills among the dispossessed refugees within its borders; a programme to provide life-saving warnings for coastal communities in India; and the use of AI to provide local election news coverage of nearly 5,000 small Spanish municipalities.

- Do not use brochure copy or other marketing-speak in your entry: the judges need to know how the team collaborated to solve this specific challenge, how successfully the project met the challenge, and the experience of the end user. Remember this is your one chance to excite the judges, so make sure you tell the full story. Reliance on brochure copy will suggest to the judges that this is simply a sale of a standard product, which does not meet the essential requirement to be an innovative, collaborative development.

- As well as the complete description we ask you for a summary of the project challenges and success, in around 100 words.

- To supplement your entry, you may want to supply images or a short video which shows the project and its effectiveness. These can be submitted online along with your entry. Only submit videos or images if they add to your explanation of the project: again, generic marketing material will not increase your chances of success. Remember, too, that the video and imagery is supplementary – the judges use the written form as the main source of information.

- After the initial judging process, a shortlist of entries in each category will be announced. We aim to make this announcement by the middle of July.

- If your entry is on the shortlist you will receive support from IBC to help you maximise the publicity benefits in the run-up to the event. IBC will also invest in publicity featuring the shortlisted entries.

- All shortlisted finalists will be invited to a reception at IBC where the Awards finalists and winners are celebrated.

- The IBC Innovation Awards are judged by an international panel of independent industry figures. The decisions of the judges are final.

- Please do not contact any member of the judging panel directly, at any stage of the judging process. Any inappropriate contact may lead to disqualification from the awards, both this year and in the future.

- View Sample Entries

- If you have any questions about the awards and how they are judged, please contact awards@ibc.org.