Nomination Process

Nomination 2010

This year's call for nominations will open on March 1st 2010.

The deadline date for submissions is April 1st 2010.

Before submitting your nomination, please ensure you read the following information.

Nomination process

Nominations are solicited from three sources: a distinguished panel of judges, editors and writers with The Economist; and readers of The Economist.

Criteria for selection

Nominees should be people, not companies, who are responsible for an innovation that has been a proven success in the past decade. Winners are selected based on their ideas:

• Impact on revenue of the nominee's sponsoring organisation, enterprise, or general economic or societal well-being

• Effect on a marketplace or the establishment of a new market; and

• Impact on an emerging branch of science and technology

Award categories

Our awards celebrate outstanding innovators in the following categories:

Bioscience: includes pharmaceuticals, biotechnology and agriculture

Business processes: enabling compounds, products, technologies or methodologies which underpin product discovery, design, or manufacturing, as well as fulfillment processes

Energy and the environment: includes energy, transportation, automotive

Social and economic innovation: novel technologies and business models that improve everyday lives (e.g. microcredit)

Computing and telecommunications: includes hardware, software, security, telecommunications

Consumer products and services: may include the product, process, media or design

“No boundaries”: technology-based products or services that don't fit neatly into any of the above categories (this includes materials science, nanotechnology and other emerging fields, e.g. blue-violet laser)