Yes. Getting your entry submitted weeks or months before the deadline provides more time for us to review your entry, provide you with feedback and for you to incorporate any updates—all resulting in a higher quality entry.

Yes. Obviously, the chances of winning an award increase if you submit entries for multiple categories or products. Also, if you decide to submit the same product for multiple categories, please be sure that each entry is unique and highly focused on the features, benefits and value relevant to the specific category.

Please do not submit confidential information.

The key to a winning entry will be the quality of the application where your responses use specific and quantitative language. For best results, avoid using text from your marketing collateral.

First, use the Entry worksheet to draft your answers. The worksheet allows you to share and collaborate with your co-workers prior to submitting your entry and helps ensure all responses fit within specified word counts. You can find the link to download the Entry worksheet when you click on “Enter Now.”

Entries will be judged on four criteria: innovation, differentiation, customer impact, and market impact. There are a total of six questions and each question is clearly marked with the associated criterion. Your response to these questions will be used by the judges to score your entry for the indicated criterion.

Each of your six responses should be concise and very specific on addressing the key points for each criterion.

The judges score each entry based on the six questions in the worksheet. To obtain a higher score and increase your probability of winning, it is important to answer all six questions – including Question #5: Customer Impact (Testimonials). If there are no existing published testimonials, please do your best to provide a generic testimonial. As a reminder, please do not submit confidential information. Here is an example of a generic customer testimonial: “Here is a testimonial from our customer whose company is a leading provider of [fill in the blank] and the testimonial is from the vice president of engineering. This customer stated [statement the customer made in support of your product].” While a generic testimonial is not as strong as a public testimonial, it does add value to your entry.

We are here to help. Please contact us at [email protected].

Yes. For question #2 of the entry form (Innovation Details), we have added the option of uploading an image (e.g. architecture diagram) and/or a short video (maximum five minutes) demonstrating a practical use of your product.  The purpose of these uploads is to help the judges better understand the technical details of your innovation.

Image specs: acceptable file types for the image are pdf, jpg, jpeg, png, or gif. The file size limit is 100MB per file.

Video specs: acceptable file types are avi, flv, mpg, mpeg, or mp4. The file size limit is 1GB. We strongly recommend submitting video at 1920x1080p resolution and 30 frames per second in the MP4 format using the H.264 or H.265 codecs to make your video fit within this file size limit.

The judges do consider market impact in evaluating entries. But, because the contest is limited to products that have been launched recently, the judges understand that it can be challenging to prove market impact.  Any information that you can provide that shows that customers are embracing the product and that it is making a difference for them should help.