A pitch competition and a business deal are not the same thing. Plenty of “innovation challenges” end with a trophy, a photo, and nothing else: no contract, no pilot, no follow-up call three months later. The ones that actually work share a specific structure, and two real examples make that structure easy to see.
In late 2023, the pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk launched the “Actors of Diabetes” challenge to find e-health solutions for diabetes patient care. It drew 38 startup submissions, and the final round was held at Station F in Paris in January 2024. The winner, DiappyMed, didn’t just receive a prize. It came away with a global partnership agreement with Novo Nordisk, while a second startup, La Tribu des Supers, won a separate award.
Around the same period, NEC ran an innovation challenge that attracted 324 participants from 66 countries, using an open platform to source and evaluate ideas. The result wasn’t a single winner story: it produced four separate collaborative projects between NEC, its partner companies, and the startups that took part.
What both cases have in common is that the company running the challenge came in with a specific, named problem, not a general call for “innovative ideas.” Novo Nordisk wanted e-health tools for diabetes care specifically. NEC had defined technology areas it needed advanced. In both cases, the company also committed, in advance, to a concrete next step for winners: a partnership or a project, not just recognition on stage.
This is the model behind Challenge Indonesia at IISE 2026. Ministries, local governments, and industries are asked to bring a specific problem they are actually facing, not a vague theme. Researchers, startups, and students then propose solutions to that named problem, and the process is designed to end in a pilot agreement, not a certificate. The lesson from Novo Nordisk and NEC is straightforward: a challenge only produces a partnership when the problem is specific and the organization running it is prepared to act on the result, not just applaud it.
Sources :
Agorize – Using open innovation challenges as a startup scouting strategy: https://get.agorize.com/en/resources/using-open-innovation-challenges-as-a-startup-scouting-strategy/