Assessing the Presence of Innovation Elements in Competitions and Awards Events in Tanzania

Innovation is increasingly becoming a key driver of economic growth globally. To unlock people's innovation potential and benefit from the innovation process, one of the ways used to entice people in innovation is the use of competitions and awards. However, little research has been done to determine the influence of competitions and awards in innovation. This research examined three competitions and awards based innovation challenges in Tanzania to determine the presence of four innovation elements which are: New Collaborators, New Method, New Topic and New technology based on the PInCH approach. Results showed that approximately 90% of the respondents across the assessed competitions agreed on the presence of the innovation elements in the competitions. These results indicated that the competitions supported creativity, involvement of participants with multidisciplinary skills and in design stage specifically, competitions promoted new ideas. It was also witnessed that competitions had rewarding achievements as supported by respondents', with over 85% acknowledging impacting their communities and building new networks.