Submissions open for Innovation Challenge 2025

The challenge spans three sectors: FinTech, Cleantech, and Data & AI. By tackling key issues such as sustainable energy, nature positive capital, data integrity, and more. The Innovation Challenge provides businesses with a platform to scale globally, create meaningful impact, and contribute to the Island’s reputation as a UNESCO Biosphere and a hub for innovation.

Categories

• The 2025 categories are:
  • Data & AI
    • Tourism reimagined through tech: Enhancing the tourism experience through enabling technology. Developing interactive tools that make exploring the Isle of Man seamless and engaging.
    • Predictive risk insights: AI based systems that interpret laws, rules, policies and regulations, politics and sentiment to define definitive answers to unstructured questions both with a jurisdiction and across jurisdiction for comparison purposes. For example interpretation of laws for politicians, legal advice and planning applications or to create a cross-jurisdictional comparison for things like Data Protection or Financial Regulation
    • Integrity through provenance: Develop transformative solutions that ensure data integrity through robust provenance tracking, enabling complete transparency of its journey. From source to certainty, this challenge seeks innovations that validate, categorise, and authenticate data to empower industries, build public trust, and unlock new possibilities for data-driven decision-making
  • Cleantech
    • Tomorrow’s sustainable spaces: Innovations that support the reduction of the environmental impact of construction and creating healthier and more efficient living and working environments
    • Rethinking energy resilience: Innovative solutions for demand-side management, efficiently fulfilling energy needs while promoting sustainability and resilience that benefits everyone
    • Eco-efficient Supply Solutions: Innovations that improve the transparency and efficiency of global supply chains in terms of environmental impact including emissions, resource consumption and waste generation
  • FinTech
    • Reimagining customer focus: Despite a robust insurance sector in the Isle of Man, many in-force policyholders and dormant customers remain disengaged, limiting opportunities for customer retention, cross-selling, and enhanced service delivery. The challenge lies in leveraging Insurtech solutions to re-engage these existing customers effectively, fostering deeper relationships and driving renewed interest and value. How can advanced technology, such as AI-driven personalisation, digital communication platforms, and data analytics, be utilised to revitalise engagement with current and dormant policyholders in a way that is both scalable and impactful?
    • Sustainable Investing: This theme explores innovations that enable the measurement and transparency of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors in investing. By creating reliable indices and data analytics, the goal is to help investors make informed decisions that align with sustainability principles and promote long-term, positive environmental and social impact
    • Mobilising Nature-Positive Capital: This theme focuses on leveraging technology to drive the global financial system’s transition to a low-carbon, socially inclusive, nature-positive and ethically governed future. Innovations could include carbon/nature trading platforms or exchanges, ESG-compliant financial tools, and other solutions that ensure financial institutions prioritise sustainability and ethical governance

What the cohort should expect?

• Over the six-week contextualisation phase, finalists will refine their solutions to address the Island’s most pressing challenges. During this period, participants will gain deep insights into local needs through workshops, expert mentoring, and collaborative sessions with community stakeholders. This phase is designed to ensure that each solution is not only innovative but also practical, impactful, and tailored to the Island’s unique context.
• The journey culminates on Thursday 26 June 2025, at the Innovation Challenge Finale Day, where the cohort will showcase their evolved solutions and compete for category awards in front of an esteemed panel of judges and a live audience.

Eligibility Criteria

• There are no restrictions on entrants other than being able to meet the Challenge and to demonstrate innovation in the solution as well as some aspect that demonstrates value to the Isle of Man. Applicants can be at any stage of business development.

For more information, visit Digital Isle of Man.