This is What it Takes to Submit an International Awards Proposal

Last week, as I was heads-down working on the EU Horizon2020 grant proposal I told you about, I received a frantic message from our interns about an award submission they were working on. Apparently, the writing was going rather poorly, so they asked me to take a look and see what I could do.

Let me start by saying that I adore our interns. They are enthusiastic and extremely talented... at things other than writing. Both are native German speakers, so of course I can't expect them to write beautifully in English, but even in German they are not writers. Grant and award writing--as I am discovering--takes a special mix of clear ideas and just the right amount of hyperbole. You have to be able to toot your horn, while still remaining true to the facts.

This particular submission for an Austrian state award for Environmental and Energy Technology was a bit tricky. Since Bioversum is a relatively new organization, we decided to submit the org itself and the Circular Innovation Design Process we are developing as the innovation. Pretty creative, no? It was my idea. :)

I had hoped the interns would have put together a nice draft, since I was still deep in the Horizon2020 grant proposal for DEEP PURPLE and both proposals had the same due date. What I found instead was a bunch of random notes cobbled together as a rough draft. Ugh... time to pull out all the stops and use that creativity that only comes in the wee-hours of the night/morning!

Burning the Midnight Oil

I am a night-owl by nature, which means I do my best work in that eerie silence that comes between 1.00 and 4.00. I work best when it is dark out. Maybe it is because it is quiet and there less distractions at that hour? Or maybe it is because during the night, my mind is able to give new meanings to the days events, putting them together in orders I hadn't thought about before. Whatever the reason, it works, so why not use it!

When I finished the draft of the DEEP PURPLE proposal, I turned my attention to the Staatpreis. Once I got the first sentence written, I was surprised at how well it flowed. By the time I sent the first piece off for approval--it was a pretty radical direction, so I wanted to get buy-off--I could already visualize where the rest would go. We only had three days to complete the submission, including translations into German, so the clock was ticking.

Pixabay

Made it in with a few hours to spare

The approval came in the following moring, so for the next two days when I wasn't writing for DEEP PURPLE, I was writing the Staatpreis. With each section I completed, someone came behind me to proof my writing, translate, proof the translation, then assemble it all together. It was a true group effort that took six people to complete, but we got it in before the deadline. Whether we win the prize or not, the results are overwhelmingly positive:

• I learned that I am pretty good at writing these things,
• Our interns learned what it really takes to put a proposal together,
• We learned to rely on each other as a team,
• And most importantly, in my opinion, we discovered that we are developing a really cool innovation!

With the submission presented, now begins the wait. The award ceremony is on the 30th of October, so we should know something in about a month or so. We are keeping our fingers crossed!

Excerpts of the final submission

If you are curious, here are a few excepts directly from the award submission. Would love to hear what you think.

What happens when you put a Green Materials Expert, Biomimicry Educator, Chemical Engineer, MBA, and Industrial Designer in a room and get them talking about how to solve to the world’s problems sustainably and in harmony with nature? The answer is Bioversum. Conceived in 2017, this young non-profit develops tools and processes to carry out its mission to put nature-inspired solutions into the hands of those who are building the systems of the future. Its Circular Innovation Design Process takes the expertise of its transdisciplinary members, with a core emphasis on Biomimicry, Circular Economy, and Circular Design, and packages it into multifaceted and flexible practices that can be used in a variety of applications. Its main dissemination vehicles are education, EU grant-based projects--such as Horizon2020--and community service across multiple fields. Whether designing an urban wastewater treatment system or a new school program, Bioversum shares its Circular Innovation to create sustainable solutions inspired by nature’s 3.8 billion years of experience.

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Open any news source today, and you will hear about the effects of our changing planet, mainly due to climate change. While there are times when it seems like there are more problems than solutions, there is hope. There is a growing understanding that changes to how we, as humans, build and behave in our world can make a substantial impact on the future of our planet. And every day, we hear of new opportunities to make those changes.

Inspired, by this ray of hope, the members of Bioversum have come together to use the power of the collective to optimize their impact. The Circular Innovation Design Process is the direct result of this collaboration. Working together on innovations of all kinds that are environmentally friendly, financially viable, socially just and inspired by nature, the results are starting to surface.

Learning from Nature

Living organisms have evolved strategies to continually develop and adapt to changing conditions for over 3.8 billion years. Many of the problems humanity faces have already been solved by the natural world. Looking to nature, we find a set of Life’s Principles—overarching patterns found in all species to survive and thrive on Earth, sustaining a circular way of living, where one’s waste is food for another. Biological design is resilient, adaptable, multifunctional, regenerative, and produces no waste. And it is these principles that Bioversum emulates in its Circular Innovation approach.

The Circular Innovation Design Process combines years of research and real-world experience, especially in the fields of Biomimicy, Circular Economy, and Circular Design, of its members to create an innovative process applicable at the broadest spectrum. Bioversum members include professional and aspiring natural, social, and applied scientists, inventors, engineers, designers, architects, entrepreneurs, managers, administrators, and companies alike who are actively working to create a more sustainable and connected world. Who better to learn from?!

By combining the best nature-inspired solutions used in academic, public, and private sectors, Bioversum has been able to quickly step into major projects with surprising success starting from one simple premise: how would nature solve this problem?

At the heart of this design process is Biomimicry, an innovation methodology that takes the natural world as a model, mentor and measure, and offers a process that leads to solutions that mimic nature. The proof of biomimicry’s impact can be seen all around the world in examples like velcro, passive cooling in buildings, highly efficient propellers, water harvesting, and even car design. Add to this the principles of Circular Design and Circular Economy to design out waste from the beginning, and you have a complete process that factors in Life’s Principles from design to completion.

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