The 2025 Contest is Now Open for Entries!
Submit your best new product ideas in any of seven categories for a chance at $25,000 USD and other great prizes. Here’s how to get started.
Help build a better tomorrow
Since Tech Briefs magazine launched the Create the Future Design contest in 2002 to recognize and reward engineering innovation, over 15,000 design ideas have been submitted by engineers, students, and entrepreneurs in more than 100 countries. Join the innovators who dared to dream big by entering your ideas today.
Read About All the 2024 Winning Inventions
Special Report spotlights the eight amazing winners in 2024 as well as honorable mentions in each category, plus the top ten most popular entries as voted by our community.
Click here to read moreA ‘Create the Future’ Winner Featured on ‘Here’s an Idea’
Spinal cord injury affects 17,000 Americans and 700,000 people worldwide each year. A research team at NeuroPair, Inc. won the Grand Prize in the 2023 Create the Future Design Contest for a revolutionary approach to spinal cord repair. In this Here’s an Idea podcast episode, Dr. Johannes Dapprich, NeuroPair’s CEO and founder, discusses their groundbreaking approach that addresses a critical need in the medical field, offering a fast and minimally invasive solution to a long-standing problem.
Listen nowThank you from our Sponsors
“At COMSOL, we are very excited to recognize innovators and their important work this year. We are grateful for the opportunity to support the Create the Future Design Contest, which is an excellent platform for designers to showcase their ideas and products in front of a worldwide audience. Best of luck to all participants!”
— Bernt Nilsson, Senior Vice President of Marketing, COMSOL, Inc.
“From our beginnings, Mouser has supported engineers, innovators and students. We are proud of our longstanding support for the Create the Future Design Contest and the many innovations it has inspired.”
— Kevin Hess, Senior Vice President of Marketing, Mouser Electronics
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Contest
Utilization of front amber turn signal lamps, employed as collision and pedestrian avoidance safety lighting, for every car, truck, motorcycle, moped, and semi-tractor trailer on the planet. This is accomplished using ultra low cost design from U.S. Patent #7,482,756. This design and system improves daytime public safety and security, plus can improve transportation safety for businesses,
Every year over 1.2 million people die in the world due to traffic related accidents. The goal of the Spira Personal Mass Transit (PMT) system is to save lives by taking vehicles off the road and into the air. The system is comprised of four major components: a rail, mules, support structure, and Spira vehicles.
The world population every year continues to grow at an alarming rate and we are feeling the effects of it increasing more and more every day. More people means more housing, more cars, more energy, and more pollution. More energy and pollution are two that go together. The bioreactor air scrubber is here to counter act that.

High-Flow Lift Pump
In fighting wildfires, and in many other applications, there is a need to lift water a few feet, say from a creek or river, to fill a header tank or mobile water tender. Particularly in firefighting, turnaround time is what measures success at the end of the day.
Virtually everyone has had the experience of placing a pot of water onto the heating element of a kitchen range, turning the selector to "Max" and then walking to the other room while making a mental note to return "in a few minutes" to remove the boiling pot from the element. Everyone knows what usually happens next....
After observing a recent episode of the popular TV show "Ice Road Truckers", I was inspired to create a solution for one of the more dangerous scenarios that these drivers face. I've learned from this TV series just how important it is that the diesel engines in these trucks are kept running.
Mag-Lift Handle
Problem: When moving or lifting furniture and appliance items, difficulty occurs when there is no handle on a flat metal surface. The item may not be too heavy to lift, just awkward. Some items, such as file cabinets, have sharp metal edges in areas use to lift the cabinet; many hands have been cut moving these.
This describes a proposed automated package transport system that supplements current methods for delivering small to medium sized packages. Advantages of this transportation method are both energy efficiency and speed of transport. Installation of the system into the existing infrastructure is possible without major environmental impacts due to the size of the transport vehicles,
Some years ago a design student solicited help for a class project to design the bicycle of the future. He needed a new propulsion system that would allow new design freedoms.
I found this challenge very exciting.
I proposed eliminating the mechanical chain and gearing system with electronics.
Introduction:
There are over 140,000 people living with upper limb loss in the United States today and 1 in 12 new amputations are of the upper limb. In a study examining the employment history of 1630 upper extremity amputees,it was found that the unemployment rate went up from 1% to 19% after amputation.
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