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 more

A ‘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 now

Thank 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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Patrick M Duggan

R&D Project Manager
Consolidated Edison Co of New York, Inc
New York, NY

Patrick M. Duggan was born in New York City on February 3, 1947. He graduated from Manhattan College in Riverdale, NY in 1968. His employment experience has been with the Consolidated Edison Company of NY, Inc. He is currently an R&D Project Manager responsible for engineering, operations and maintenance related R&D projects for various Substation, Transmission and System Operations organizations, and assists specific efforts in additional areas, such as Cybersecurity, Con Edisonâ??s 3rd Generation System of the Future efforts, Transmission Risk Assessment and substation condition based maintenance and automation.  Pat has held a variety of management and technical positions in Generation and Controls, Nuclear Power, Instrumentation and Controls, Project Management, Construction and Electrical Engineering. Patâ??s experience has included key roles in the development of fault current limiters, potential applications of superconductivity, as a member of IEEE NPEC and NPEC SC-6 on Safety Systems nuclear industry standards, regulatory interfaces, and a wide variety of major projects and programs.  Pat is currently the Utility Chairman for EPRIâ??s Superconductivity Task Force and represents Consolidated Edison on the Board of the Coalition for Commercial Application of Superconductors and the Board and multiple Work Groups of the GridWise Alliance.