Business4Change Hackathon: Call for Expressions of Interest from Potential Challenge Owners & Experts

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Deadline: 11 May 2020

The European Commission is currently inviting businesses and organisations to take part in the upcoming ‘Business4Change hackathon’. The hackathon aims to deliver new business models and solutions to facilitate the circular economy.

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Business4Change is a 2-day hackathon contest, organised to ‘hack’ or solve issues businesses are facing in their transition to the circular economy. The hackathon emphasises the potential of social innovation and the role of new business models in the circular economy. Business4Change is an initiative of the European Commission and will take place on 16-17 November 2020 within the European Business Summit at the Egmont Palace in Brussels, Belgium.

Over the course of 2 days, different teams will compete against each other to come up with innovative and creative solutions to solve a practical challenge related to the circular economy. The challenges are selected in collaboration with challenge owners and experts representing companies, associations, and NGOs. Leading up to the hackathon, selected experts will share their knowledge on the circular economy with the participants. Challenge owners will provide attractive prizes to the winners of the hackathon.

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Examples of potential questions that could be covered during the hackathon include

How to collect evidence on the durability and reparability of electronic devices?
How to develop systems to weight reparability, durability, functional effectiveness and costs of products?
Objectives

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This call for expression of interest invites public and private organizations to become challenge owners or experts in the hackathon, helping participating businesses and organizations find a concrete solution for a challenge in their transition to the circular economy. Teams from all over Europe will work on their challenge to find socially innovative and sustainable solutions, promoting new business models.

What is the role of the Challenge Owners and Experts?

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Challenge Owners
Challenge owners are business of any size engaged or willing to engage in the circular economy. They will:
help define the challenges to be tackled during the hackathon, based on concrete, operational issues they are facing.
prepare the teams before the event and support them during the event.
judge the results of the hackathon and provide the winner with a non-monetary prize (e.g. incubator space, promotion at a relevant event, training, workshops, seed funding, place in an accelerator programme, mentorship, etc.)
Experts
Experts are individuals from public or private sector organizations (e.g. NGOs, universities and research institutes, industry associations, circular economy networks) with in-depth knowledge of circular economy issues. They will:
contribute to scoping the challenges, training the teams on specific issues related to their expertise and judge the results of the hackathon.
disseminate the hackathon’s results after the event.
Challenge owners and experts will participate in the following hackathon milestones:

online introductory workshop to discuss and fine-tune the challenges (4h in June 2020 – date to be confirmed)
training webinars: two webinars to meet and train the teams before the event (around 6h in September 2020 – date TBC)
Social Innovation Hackathon (2-day event): a challenge owner organization representative supports the teams during the event, while another participates in the jury – experts only participate in the jury (16-17 November 2020)
Benefits

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You can:

solve concrete business issues in your industry with the help of innovators
benefit from the Europe-wide promotion and visibility, highlighting your contribution to tackling issues in environment, society and economy
participate in the annual European Business Summit, one of the largest networking and debating events in Brussels including over 2,000 participants and 200 high-level speakers
Eligibility Criteria

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Organizations should be based in or have an office in a country participating in the COSME programme. This includes all EU countries as well as some non-EU countries.
In addition, challenge owners and experts should be available to participate in the online meetings scheduled ahead of the event and travel to Brussels on the days of the event (16-17 November 2020).
Challenge owners and experts will not receive any remuneration, nor reimbursement of accommodation or travel expenses.
Selection Criteria

The Commission will select two challenges and between 2 and 4 experts. Depending on the challenges selected, they might invite several candidate challenge owners to work together on the same issue. An ad-hoc selection committee within the European Commission will select challenge owners and experts.
The evaluation criteria comprise
the challenge(s) (i.e. business issues) proposed for the hackathon (2 max.)
the description of their sectoral impact, societal impact and business potential
potential to be scaled-up to other sectors and across the EU
alignment with EU priorities in the green deal and the new circular economy action plan
prize(s) offered to the winning participants
tools to disseminate winning solutions
being active in one of the following industries constitutes an advantage: IT, electronics, transport and mobility, building and construction, mining, furniture, food and drinks
The European Commission has sole and absolute discretion to select the challenges based on the above-mentioned criteria. Unsuccessful candidates will not receive individual feedback but they will be informed that their applications have not been retained by email.

For more information, visit http://ebsummit.eu/Hackathon/