Harvard Innovation Labs Calls for Students to Address the “Unprompted” in President’s Innovation Challenge Launch

The Harvard Innovation Labs launched its annual President’s Innovation Challenge on Tuesday, offering startup funding from a prize pool of $500,000 to students across the University.

The challenge, inaugurated in 2012, aims to financially support venture proposals and established startups by awarding 25 finalists with grants between $25,000 and $75,000. The competition also introduced Ingenuity Awards, which awards $2500 to idea-stage venture proposals. The prizes are funded yearly by the Bertarelli Foundation, a memorial fund meant to support science research and social impact projects.

This year’s theme is “Unprompted,” which encourages applicants to be self-starters, i-labs Executive Director Jill R. Kravetz said at the launch party.

“You came to Harvard to learn, and somewhere along the way, you spotted a problem that you could not get past, and absolutely needed to find a way to solve,” Kravetz said. “You chose entrepreneurship to solve the problem without anyone asking you to. And for that, we celebrate you.”

The competition accepts startups on a healthcare and life sciences track, a social impact track, and an open track, allowing the i-labs to award funding to a diverse group of finalists.

“We actually see a pretty wide range of applicants from all 13 Harvard schools, from different industries, different countries, different majors and backgrounds, and graduation years,” i-lab spokesperson Michaella Estevez said in an interview after the event.

The launch party drew a crowd of roughly 150 attendees and also featured a panel with three former competition finalists — all of whom now lead established startups. Olivia Zhang ’27, who founded a nonprofit that supports pediatric cancer patients, said the President’s Innovation Challenge was a rare opportunity to hear “very business-forward feedback” on her work.

“I think being able to think about Cancer Kids First from a funding and business model perspective was very interesting to me because we had never been critiqued that way,” Zhang said.

The i-labs, Harvard’s center for entrepreneurship, has seen an increase in interested students — largely due to the President’s Innovation Challenge and the visibility it brings to the i-labs, according to Estevez. This year, 13 percent of Harvard students are i-labs members, a two percent jump from last year, she said. Estevez said the i-labs is also looking to “hand out even more money” by expanding their prizes in the future.

Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 sent an email to Harvard affiliates in late October announcing the challenge, noting that application will close on Dec. 8. Garber wrote in the email that the i-lab hosts the competition each year to “address some of our world’s most pressing challenges.”

“We hope that you will be inspired to become part of this remarkable legacy,” Garber wrote. “And we look forward to hearing your ideas.”