The 2022 MAKO Student Innovation Award Competition

Register now to watch the 2022 MAKO Student Innovation Award Pitch Competition Finals!

Congratulations to everyone who submitted their entry for the 2022 MAKO Student Innovation Award! Yes, it’s that time of year again! Our Toronto MAKO Design office is teaming up with Ryerson University to hold this 2022 Toronto invention design competition.

Our passion for design extends well beyond providing world-class product and invention design services. As a firm catering to startups and small businesses, we aim to demystify the complex aspects of our industry.

Our blog and podcast are some of the ways we inspire the next generation of innovators to accomplish this mission. Specifically, we view this award competition as a huge opportunity to provide unique tools and strategic guidance for young entrepreneurs.

We not only strive to help prepare young individuals to become successful entrepreneurs but also to encourage them to transform our society positively with their innovative ideas.

At the end of last year’s invention design competition, our President and Founder Kevin Mako, left us with a positive note: “Volatility leads to gaps, and those gaps lead to market spaces – market spaces that need to be filled by new and aspiring entrepreneurs.”

Indeed, we’re excited to see how young entrepreneurs seized this moment as an opportunity despite the ongoing challenges of the pandemic. We hope they take this opportunity to introduce novel ideas that will usher in long-term, sustainable solutions to problems worth solving.

About the MAKO Student Innovation Award

The MAKO Student Innovation Award is open to participants in Ryerson’s Zone Learning ecosystem. Specifically, those who are working towards bringing a new invention design or commercial product to market.

Participants are full-time or part-time students studying in undergraduate, graduate, or continuing education programs. Along with a video or photo of the physical product prototype, entrants also submit a business plan outlining their product concept, business model, and the social impact of their new product.

From these entries, a group of finalists will be selected based on their project’s innovativeness, marketability and commercialization, business model, and social impact.

Finalists will then present their project to a select panel of industry experts, not unlike pitching on Dragons’ Den. The winner of this 2022 Toronto invention design competition receives an award of a $10,500 grant.

Stay tuned for more! We’ll be sharing regular updates about the MAKO Student Innovation Award on our blog in the following months!

About: MAKO Design + Invent is the original firm providing world-class consumer product development services tailored to startups, small manufacturers, and inventors. Simply put, we are the leading one-stop-shop for developing your physical product from idea to store shelves, all in a high-quality, cost-effective, and timely manner. We operate as one powerhouse 30-person product design team spread across 4 offices to serve you (Austin, Miami, San Francisco, & Toronto). We have full-stack in-house industrial design, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, patent referral, prototyping, and manufacturing services. To assist our startup and inventor clients, in addition to above, we help with business strategy, product strategy, marketing, and sales/distribution for all consumer product categories. Also, our founder Kevin Mako hosts The Product Startup Podcast, the industry's leading hardware podcast. Check it out for tips, interviews, and best practices for hardware startups, inventors, and product developers. Click HERE to learn more about MAKO Design + Invent!