Future Innovation Awards 2025

The purpose of Lund University's and Sparbanken Skåne's Future Innovations Award is to promote an innovation-friendly culture within the University and stimulate more ideas that can become future innovations. We welcome ideas and projects from all disciplines.

To submit an entry, you must be an employee or student at Lund University. If there are several people behind an idea, at least one of you must be a student or employee at Lund University.

The boundary for what counts as an idea is not razor-sharp. Perhaps the idea connects to promising research results, maybe it's a solution to a problem you've been thinking about or working on for a while. Since we encourage innovation projects to establish customer contact as early as possible, you may have made a test sale of up to 50,000 SEK before March 5, 2025, when applications for the prize open

To win, participants should demonstrate how their idea can benefit people, society, or the environment. 

The jury more specifically looks at the following criteria:  

• Uniqueness & orignality
• Need & validation
• Sustainability
• Scalability and market potential
• Feasibility and capability

You submit your entry through the competition platform YouNoodle - the application page opens on March 5 and closes on May 5. The first step is to create an account on YouNoodle. After that, you fill in the application and submit it. The questions are written in English, but you may fill out the form in English or Swedish. 

If the team behind the idea consists of both students and employees, you compete in the Employee category. If someone in the group has pursued doctoral studies at Lund University or another institution, the entire team should compete in the Employee category.

The prize money is a scholarship that goes to the main applicant. The prize is funded by Sparbanken Skåne through the owner foundation Sparbanksstiftelsen Finn. The prize money should be used for the project you applied with. Otherwise, there are no reporting requirements. The prize money is normally not subject to taxation. 

Please be aware, the prize winner may be asked to participate in events at LU Innovation to talk about how the project has progressed, and winners may also be asked to participate in media interviews about the project.

The total prize sum of 1,050,000 SEK is distributed as follows:

Lund University and Sparbanken Skåne's Future Innovations Award:

Employee Category

• One prize of 200,000 SEK
• One honorary prize of 150,000 SEK

Student Category

• One prize of 150,000 SEK
• One prize of 75,000 SEK

Category: Most Promising New Idea 2025

     Employee Category

• One prize of 150,000 SEK

  Student Category

• One prize of 75,000 SEK

Category: Lund University and Sparbanken Skåne's Future Innovator Award

– One prize of 250,000 SEK

A new award, the Future Innovator Award, is being introduced in 2025 and will be selected through a separate process, where faculties from Lund University will be asked to nominate candidates. The nomination process for the "Innovator Award" opens on April 5th, 2025, and continues until May 5th, 2025.

Information sent to Lund University may legally be considered a public document according to the Swedish the principle of transparency of public work, so avoid specifying technical details in the application. If you are unsure, contact Per Mercke at LU Innovation per [dot] mercke [at] innovation [dot] lu [dot] se for advice.

Students who are enrolled at Lund University or have completed at least 1 ECTS credit at the university during the academic year autumn semester 2024 are eligible to compete in the student category. Doctoral students / PhD students belong to the Employee category.

It's permitted to compete with the same idea multiple times, provided that the idea has not received a prize in the competition in previous years.

The evaluation of contributions for the idea categories (all the awards except the "innovator award") is planned to be completed by mid-June. At that time, you will be notified if you have been selected as one of the finalists.

The finalists in the idea categories will develop their presentations during late August and early September through Value Creation sessions organised by LU Innovation. For this training, you will be assigned one session per week for three weeks leading up to the final.

All finalists wil be asked to pitch in the Grand Final, held on September 10.

Even if your idea/project was not selected for the final, we can still help you develop your idea further, for example, through coaching, through validation grants, or our programmes. 

To select the winners, the entries will be evaluated by a jury with experience in entrepreneurship, sustainability, investments, and venture building, including representatives from Lund University and Sparbanken Skåne. 

Naturally, we will let you know how you have done if you have submitted an application. We communicate with all the applicants, through the YouNoodle platform. Occasionally, specific email filters that the messages get categorised as 'other' or possibly 'spam'. Try to check all the different inboxes.