Innovator Fellowship

This programme wants to enhance the human intellectual capital of research-intensive institutions and R&I private agri-food system organisations by preparing a new generation of 'researchpreneurs'. Nurturing entrepreneurial talents is a key driver to boost competitiveness and long-term value creation of the food ecosystem. The Innovator Fellowship programme is targeted at creative, young professionals and researchers worldwide who have the ambition to solve global challenges and enhance their career prospects and employability. The participants get the chance to develop an innovative idea to significantly impact the food system's regenerative, inclusive and positive growth.

If you have an idea that may impact the Food systems and you are passionate about unveiling/unlocking sustainable and innovative solutions, Innovator Fellowship is the programme and journey for you.

Innovator Fellowship embraces the three EIT Food missions:

1. HEALTHIER LIVES THROUGH FOOD - enabling more consumers to make better choices through access to healthier products and actionable information.
2. NET-ZERO FOOD SYSTEMS - reducing CO2 equivalent emissions by tackling CO2 hotspots, reducing the footprint of proteins through diversification, and creating new markets for food waste.
3. A FULLY TRANSPARENT, RESILIENT AND FAIR FOOD SYSTEM - a more resilient, trusted food supply chain with people experiencing greater food security and safety through widespread digitally enabled food supply chains.

Together with the EIT Food community of academic and private sector stakeholders, you will address the complex and critical challenges of sustainability and climate change, non-communicable diseases and poor nutrition, consumer trust, scarcity and transparency through a missions-led approach.

EIT Food Innovator Fellowship offers a highly stimulating and creative six-month programme coupled with key skills acquisition and mentoring to translate a lab-idea into a business idea. You will receive high-level training on entrepreneurial skills and one-to-one mentoring, allowing you to impact the food systems, diversify your skills portfolio, enhance your employability, and immerse in the EIT Food ecosystem and its opportunities.

After the evaluation based on scientific knowledge, skills and professional experiences, talents will be selected and invited to participate in the programme. The journey will start with a series of training sessions to build a community of game changers. The Innovator Fellowship talents will then progress through team formation, business idea development, and pitching sessions supported by mentoring. The journey will culminate with a final pitch event, where the new ventures will pitch their business proposition in the presence of a jury of innovative food system specialists.

The Innovator Fellowship journey will develop over six months. During these six months, you will be involved in about 10 – 12 days of training and one-on-one mentoring. The journey is designed to be compatible with fellows' busy schedules based on an efficient and effective workload (see below).

The Innovator Fellowship programme consists of seven steps.

Step 1 – COMMUNITY & TEAM BUILDING – |ONLINE TRAINING| June 19th – 20th 2025 – 14:30 18:30 both days.

To move from individuals to a community and to perform teamwork, it is necessary to connect personally before making commitments, forming teams, and working together. People who complement, challenge, and support one another make great teams.

In the Community and Team-Building training, your values will be the chemistry and glue that forms a game-changer community. You will share common values and objectives and make informed choices about what powers the team to innovate.

In this step, the Innovator Fellowship connecting platform will be opened and introduced. This platform will be the starting point for team formation and ideation. Imagine it as a “Market Space” for sharing ideas and values and developing a team. You will be called to form a team of at least two people and start to identify a food sector problem/challenge. The “Market Space” will be organised around food system challenges (work tables), to which fellows will have access. Talents will gather around a common challenge, identify a problem they wish to tackle and create a team around a common idea.

Step 2 – SYSTEM THINING & SDGs FOR THE FOOD SYSTEMS |ONLINE TRAINING| June 27th 2024 (14:30 – 18:30).

System Thinking and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for Food Systems will allow you to acquire a system approach to problem-solving and critical thinking, which is later instrumental when deciding which problem to concentrate on and which agrifood challenge to solve. In addition, systemic approaches are much-desired to dissect the complexity of food systems and their subsystems, as revealed by the multitude of interconnections between the food ecosystem services. System thinking approaches support food systems' sustainable transformation by shifting from linear thinking of producing-consuming-wasting to a holistic way of looking at resources and stakeholders involved. Methods and tools for the Food System approach will be transferred to you via interactive learning. A hands-on activity will allow you to design maps that explain parts of the food system's complexity and communicate it to the other participants.

Step 3 - TOUCH AND GO WITH MENTORS |ONLINE Meeting| July 4th 2024 (15:30 – 17:30).

The former fellows consider mentoring one of the programme's best training activities. We will provide high-level, one-on-one mentoring activities to help you shape your idea successfully. Step 3 begins by meeting the mentors and helping you identify the best pair mentor team. The Innovator Fellowship management will help to assign mentors to the teams. The pairing will be followed by structured mentoring to advance the team’s original project via a real working viability frame. Structured mentoring will be arranged according to the needs of the team together with the mentor and will consist of a series of meetings.

Step 4 – ENHANCING TEAM ACTIVITIES FOR PROBLEM/SOLUTION IDENTIFICATION |ONLINE| July 11th and 18th, 14:30 – 16:30 both days; August 29th 2025, 14:30 – 16:30.

The food system's complexity allows you to pinpoint a problem of local/global dimension and begin to analyse it concerning your team's knowledge, competencies, and values. It also requires a degree of analytical and critical thinking to reflect on the problem's business value. In step 4, the mentors and the Innovator Fellowship team will support you in consolidating the problem and smoothing down different opinions within the team dynamics. Ultimately, your business proposition will start to be shaped for the next step of refinements.

Step 5 – INNO-CAMP |ON-SITE| September 2nd – 6th 2025 (4.5 days on-site activities)
DESIGN THINKING & BUSINESS MODELLING FOR IDEA DEFINITION
(Per Diem support is foreseen for travel and subsistence)

The Innovation Camp will challenge your assumptions and redefine your problem to initiate the ideation process and create an innovative solution. Design Thinking and Business Modelling are at the core of this process. This is when you build a solid business proposition, enhance collaborations within your team, and develop in a cohesive Innovator Fellowship cohort. A team and teamwork are the ultimate assets for executing any function in a real work context, and the ability to collaborate is the key strategic factor. Collaborative joint effort to transform an idea into a business idea will remain a prerogative of the programme.

This step will be done ON-SITE in an attractive European city with flight connections.

Step 6 – BUSINESS4GROWTH – |ONLINE|

Business Planning – October 2th – 3th, and 15th – 16th 2025 (three days).

Step 6 is the core entrepreneurial education training. The training courses are tailor-made, unique, business-driven momentum, delivered by highly specialised experts. They cover areas designed to enable the teams to acquire entrepreneurial and transversal skills to develop and implement their ideas. The talents will broaden their horizons and deepen their competencies, learning how to analyse your idea from different angles to have a viable, financially sustainable, and impactful project/product or service impacting the Food system. Moreover, through regular team meetings, the teams will continue to fine-tune their initial idea into a mature proposal to expand opportunities for further financial support.

Step 7. FINAL PITCH EVENT |ONSITE| – InnovAbility: from research space to new business ventures. November 21st, 2025 (half day – morning). (Per Diem support is foreseen for travel and subsistence)

After an exciting few months of work, the final event is where teams present their fully developed business ideas to experts and venture capitalists. This programme’s winners will access services for prototyping, market analysis, and fine-tuning business planning.

This step will be done ON-SITE in an attractive European city with flight connections.

Global challenges in the Agri-Food system require a mind shift and a thrilling change in the awareness and competencies of talents: the new generation of entrepreneurs are asked to play an instrumental role in solving the planet's food-related issues. Talents from academia (researchers) and the private agri-food sector (Professionals) are called to boost and diversify their career paths, solve global challenges, and enhance their career prospects.

Innovator Fellowship is a journey designed to expand your career portfolio by providing skills in high demand in the job market. Critical thinking, problem solving, leadership, and entrepreneurial abilities can make a difference in your career. When these skills come together with sustainable, circular and innovative business models, they become a powerful tool to solve societal challenges and increase your employability potential.

Moreover, the EIT Food ecosystem is the perfect network to enhance your career prospect, offering further opportunities to develop your business idea.

600 EURO programme commitment fee including VAT (21%). 

This fee applies to the selected fellows invited to the programme. The selected fellows shall pay this fee within 15 days of receiving the invitation to participate.

Applications clearly made solely using AI text generation and un-proof read will not be accepted and rejected.