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
contest/2012
2012
SpinDyne's "Shields Brother's Engine"
If public and private transportation vehicles were powered by an engine which would be significantly more economical without sacrificing power, less costly to manufacture, less costly to maintain, quieter, and naturally low in all forms of vehicular emissions, the quality of life would be greatly enhanced.
The omni-IDE is a versatile, comprehensive “software defined” electronic appliance that serves as a core platform for a wide range of embedded applications, hence the name "omni-IDE."
The omni-IDE capabilities provide the following benefits:
*Ready-to-use
*Practical utility
*Ease of deployment

Industrial conveying systems are used in many industries on production lines to convey many types of products such as cardboard boxes or plastic bottles. Typical conveyor systems consist of a moving chain or belt supported in a permanently mounted rigid frame with fixed guide rails to maintain product orientation as it flows down the conveyor.

Almost all the major diseases are somehow linked to metabolic alterations. The introduction of Hyperpolarized Metabolic Imaging has opened completely new possibilities to study non-invasively the biochemical changes in disease processes by improving the sensitivity of Magnetic Resonance by more than 20,000-fold (PNAS 2003).
The microSNIFFER is a portable electronic monitoring device for detecting and reporting hazardous materials.
The benefits of the microSNIFFER are as follows:
Local and remote monitoring; small size; long battery life; gas, liquid and solid monitoring functions; low-cost. This design idea will improve quality of life; facilitate tedious tasks; help prevent injury or death;


There are many efforts to use technology to provide navigational aid to the visually impaired. The technologies available today, including the global positioning system (GPS) and powerful mobile devices, have enabled a range of solutions. Unfortunately, many of these solutions fall short of ideal.
The proposed design of the robot for Urban Search and Rescue(USAR) assists in locating survivors in the debris, left after a disaster, natural or human-inflicted, rescues them and brings them to safety. In a nutshell, the robot is remotely-controlled to traverse the affected areas, scanning for survivors,


70% of the average household's energy bill is spent on heating and hot water. By focusing sunlight on a linear boiler (with a parabolic trough or linear fresnel reflector), making steam and putting that through an efficient steam turbine connected to a permanent magnet alternator, and a condensing thermal storage tank it is possible to make heat,
Many biological species have disappeared or evolved through the history of our planet. Such could be the fate of mankind – to disappear or to evolve. What makes us different from other biological species is CONSCIOUSNESS.Through the centuries, people have looked for ways to preserve it, even after death.
My idea came to me as I was leaving home for work on June 20th. I looked at my house as I pulled out of the drive way and noticed my roof exhaust fan spinning away and I thought, too bad we couldn’t harvest the energy it wastes.
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