Design Intelligence Awards 2020
Build your brand and grow your business in China
Calling UK entrepreneurs, innovators and designers — enter the Design Intelligence Awards 2020 by July 6th for an opportunity to win Gold Awards worth £115,000.
UK innovators 2019 DIA Gold winners: Open Bionics — Hero Arm
In 2019, UK innovators Open Bionics scooped a DIA Gold award worth £115,000 that has made a big difference to their business and proves that UK firms have the ideas, reputation and talent to succeed in this huge market.
“Winning a DIA Award has made a big difference to our business ambitions ensuring we fully understand the implications of rapid international expansion. As a small growing business, winning a DIA award gave us huge exposure and really helped us up our game. It’s made us rethink our market strategy and how we evaluate the territories we go after.” Co-founder and COO Samantha Payne
The DIA is an exceptional opportunity for UK entrepreneurs and designers to build both reputation and market share. Hosted by the renowned China Academy of Art, the DIA recognises the innovative design of world leading products and services and outstanding designers and studios. Now in its fifth year, DIA has become one the worlds’ most prestigious and popular awards programmes attracting applicants from 56 countries and creating a big opportunity for global exposure for UK entrepreneurs
Samantha Payne, Open Bionics, COO and Co-founder explains how winning has fuelled their growth, why they entered and their awards experience and tips for UK firms entering in 2020.
Open Bionics story
Open Bionics design and develop affordable, assistive devices that enhance the human body. They started with Hero Arm, a stylish multi-grip bionic hand and are on a mission to make beautiful bionic limbs more accessible.
There are about 5 million amputees in the world. The bionic limb industry is growing at a compound annual growth of 20%. Hero Arm is the first medical-certified 3D printing bionic hand in the world, and also the first to fit children as young as 8 years old and up. Compared with traditional prosthesis, it can assemble and print quickly to achieve perfect fitness. The strength of Hero Arm lies not only in its leading edge in technology, but also in its full understanding of users’ feelings.
The impact of winning
“In some ways we were pioneers and undoubtedly the experience has reduced risk for us and helped us carefully consider our go to market strategy to maximise investment. We learnt a lot about the ecosystem in China and our eyes have been opened to the nuances and challenges of selling into the medical device market.
You can’t go into China in a half-hearted way and it gave us the opportunity to fully understand how much we needed to invest and the importance of intermediaries in dealing with clinical distributors. As you’d expect winning had massive impact on team motivation and the funding enabled us to invest more into R&D that accelerated our development and took our design thinking one step further.”
Why Open Bionics entered
“It’s a stand out competition and I would recommend start-ups applying, as although it has low awareness in Europe it’s huge in China and you learn an incredible amount about yourself, your team and your product through the process.
There were some super slick designs on show. There was a great mix of competitors from Adidas with a huge consumer product to more niche products and we wanted to be seen in good company. We were the only company to receive unanimous yeses from the judges. The standard of judges was exceptional and tested our mettle, demanding we know our consumer inside out and that our design approach needed to achieve the highest standard.”
Awards experience and tips
“In terms of the pitch it was very straight forward. It definitely helped to have a user or advocate there. I would highly recommend nominees bring an ambassador with them. Seeing the tech in action is always more meaningful. Other competitors suffered because there was no tech demo or voice of the customer present.
The excitement of winning generated a huge amount of press interest and lots of media coverage. Above all this gives us a reference point for when we leverage the prize money and introductions to enter the market. The money is a huge help and what’s special about these awards is how they recognise and reward people who want to take risks by shortlisting firms that are solo-starters. This gave us a benchmark in terms of the global standards we’re up against.”
Cash prizes of £560,000 to super-charge a winner’s growth
DIA prizes will make a significant difference to a winner’s growth. Grand Prix winners collect £560,000 in total with two Gold prizes winners collecting £115,000 each to invest the funds as they wish. In addition to the financial award, entrants benefit from access to customers, partners, distributors and investors and the DIA global marketing campaign across digital and social media, events and conferences.
DIA UK applicants
DIA have appointed a dedicated UK judging team led by John Mathers, former Design Council CEO and current Chair of the British Design Fund. If you’ve queries about the awards contact John at:
john@britishdesignfund.co.uk
Easy to apply — Deadline July 6th 2020
DIA recognises that entrepreneurs’ time is at a premium, so the application process is free, easy and takes around an hour to complete by visiting: https://en.di-award.org/
For more on Open Bionics visit — https://openbionics.com/
