Young Innovators Awards 2020-21

Innovate UK is working in partnership with The Prince’s Trust to find young people from across the UK with great business ideas. Their goal is to find a new group of young innovators that, with their help, can turn their great ideas into successful businesses.

The Young Innovators Awards will support up to 100 more young people by 2023 through annual competitions. So far, 24 young people have received Young Innovators awards and 12,000 young people have engaged with the #IdeasMeanBusiness campaign. You can find out more about the Young Innovators programme here.

Winners will get a living allowance for the 2 days (15 hours) a week that you will spend working on your Award at an hourly rate matching the UK real living wage plus a £5,000 grant. Awards will start 1 December 2020. You will get 12 months’ support.

To be eligible for an award you must:

• be a UK resident who has the right to work in the UK, or will have the right to work in the UK at the time of the Award
• be aged between 18 and 30 on the date of competition closing
• have not previously received a Young Innovators Award from Innovate UK

You must be able to commit:

• to working for 2 days (15 hours) per week on your Young Innovators Award
• to attending 2 x 1.5 day bootcamps (w/c 16th November 2020 and w/c 24th May 2021)
• to providing at least 4 days over the duration of the Award to be a role model for the Young Innovators Programme

You are eligible to apply if you are receiving support from The Prince’s Trust’s in-person Enterprise programme.

In the application you will need to pitch your idea in a short video, up to 3 minutes long. This must be uploaded to either Vimeo or YouTube and provided as a private link in question 6 of your application. If you have included password protection on your video please state the password in question 6. If we are unable to view your video your application will be ineligible.

We encourage you to view the webinar recordings and resources available on the Young Innovators programme page before you make your application. The webinars available include: “Your application”, “Growing Your Business Idea”, and “What Is Innovation?”