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Home > Research > Disruptive Technology Challenge > Competition Information About the DTC
The Disruptive Technology Challenge (DTC) seeks to support bold faculty and student innovation that has the potential to disrupt or create markets, disrupt current thinking in a field, or provoke new avenues of research. With a Cdn $100,000 annual fund, the DTC will support investment in projects that:
- Have the potential to disrupt or create markets, disrupt current thinking in a field, or provoke new avenues of research in areas relating to or impacting Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and
- Are demonstratable within a 1-2 year M.Eng./M.Sc. or a 3-4 year Ph.D. program.
A DTC requirement for innovation to be both potentially disruptive and demonstratable within an M.Eng/M.Sc. or Ph.D. timeframe may give an edge to project proposals involving:
- Interdisciplinary work that brings developments from several disciplines together in novel ways - creating ‘flashpoints', or the Medici Effect (e.g., Macintosh computer, iPod, ... )
- Software development (e.g., Google, Facebook, Flickr, ...)
- Development of a unique business model that is applicable to existing services/products (e.g., what iTunes did for the iPod, Charles Schwab and online trading, ...)
- Applying existing technologies and applications to new or different markets (e.g., Amazon, eBay, ...)
- Developments that enable existing products/services to cross a disruptive market threshold (e.g., Bell Telephones vs Telegraphy, CDs vs LPs, ...)
A maximum of four projects will be funded each year. The submission deadline for Year 1 is October 31, 2008. For Year 1, the DTC is only open to faculty and students at universities affiliated with TRLabs - the Universities of Alberta, Calgary, Saskatchewan, Regina, and Manitoba. Both individual and team submissions are acceptable. Inter-disciplinary, inter-faculty, and/or inter-university team submissions are encouraged.
The division of the Cdn $100,000 award will be at the discretion of a DTC Selection Committee. A wide range of both individual and team submissions across a variety of technical and/or business disciplines can be accommodated. For example, the award might be divided between four individual submissions (a faculty member with a graduate student identified, or vice versa) or granted to a single interdisciplinary team (e.g. a faculty member + graduate student from business together with a faculty member + two graduate students from Computer Science), depending on the merits of the proposals received. The majority of each award must be used to fund students.
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Updated Wednesday September 3rd, 2008 13:50:22