A collaboration between CTM (Dr Letizia Mortara and Ravi Sikhwal) and the Centre for Industrial Sustainability (Dr Shima Barakat and Dr Curie Park) has started this year: MAKE-it! is a 3-year project funded by EIT Food that aims to enable innovation and entrepreneurship in the food sector through co-creation between industry, maker spaces and stakeholders. One major aspect of the project is the design and delivery of a series of pan- European MAKEathons to tackle grand challenges and establish the good practices in this space.

The first MAKEthon was held at Makespace in Cambridge in July and focused on creating new objects that aim to disrupt our everyday routines practices around sugar consumption. Attendees were given the opportunity and support to use all of Makespace’s equipment and expertise to turn their ideas into usable products. This autumn three more hackathons have been organised addressing challenges in the cocoa (in collaboration with ETH Zurich), and meat (in collaboration with DIL Germany and VTT Finland) industries. However, this work in 2019 sets the scene for 10 further Makethons to be held in 2020 in many countries across Europe.

In parallel to the delivery of the project, the team is working to develop an understanding of the principles of running these quick and agile innovation contests in collaboration with the strategic technology and innovation management consortium.